A few years ago I sold all my stuff to explore the world, creating 12 startups in 12 months and building $1M+/y in companies as an indie maker such as Nomad List and Remote OK. I'm also a big pusher of remote work and try to analyze the effects it will have on society. Follow me on Twitter or see my list of posts. My first book MAKE is out now.
May 29, 2016

My chatbot gets catcalled

Society

A year ago, I made a travel chatbot called Taylor. It uses data from Nomad List to give you recommendations on where to go and also tells you where you can work and sleep.

I launched it to Product Hunt and it did pretty well. Thousands of people have since used it.

Screenshot 2016-05-29 19.09.53

I used stock photos to add a human persona behind the text-only chat bot.

@KateKendall made a good point how most chat bots have female names:

Please stop branding artificial intelligence companies with female names. Especially the assistant-style ones.

— Kate Kendall (@KateKendall) July 17, 2015

Mine was a unisex name (Taylor), but the original persona behind it was still a female:

Screenshot 2016-05-29 18.47.40

I listened and added two other personas:

Screenshot 2016-05-29 18.47.53

Screenshot 2016-05-29 18.47.28

New users of Taylor bot were randomized and were sent to one of the three personas.

@KateKendall Hey Kate, I've listened to this and updated http://t.co/K1rkZCxgFb now and made it unisex (see switch at top right)

— levels (@levelsio) August 24, 2015

Now, here it comes. Taylor has a feedback option:

Screenshot 2016-05-29 18.52.35

It’s used to give feedback about how the bot is doing its job.

It usually goes fine:

Screenshot 2016-05-29 18.42.00

Here too:

Screenshot 2016-05-29 18.45.38

The Asian female though:

Screenshot 2016-05-29 18.45.14

P.S. I wrote a book on building indie startups called MAKE. And I'm on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my stories. I don't use email so tweet me your questions. Or you can see my list of posts. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below:

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