Recently, eBay presented a ShopBot in beta version on Facebook messenger. This bot is built for helping buyers narrow down some of the best deals offered by eBay.

This shopbot (virtual assistant) is powered by A.I. to help it understand the context of a buyer’s needs, and it has machine learning capabilities, which will be improved over the time.

Indeed, AI provides predictive modeling, machine learning capabilities, and contextual understanding. eBay ShopBot powered with AI can improve the personal shopping experience (virtually) for anyone who owns a smartphone.

To start a conversation, you just need to text “Hello”. Moreover, you can start the conversation by snapping a picture to tell eBay ShopBot what exactly you are looking for. To better understand your intent and make personalized recommendations, the bot will ask you some questions.

It would be too early to judge ShopBot’s failure and success. However, I do not know who wants to shop via ShopBot. Do you think browsing shopping websites is better than chatting with AI bot? Now, you have a friend (online) in your Facebook messenger chat list to chat anytime!

Back in 2014, 77% of customers who used to shop online wanted to interact with companies either via email or phone compared to 23 % of users who preferred live chats and social media.

There has been a major shift in consumer behavior.

According to Forrester, 44% of customers need an assistant to guide them through an online transaction and having a person somewhere in the background – a professional who is ready to give answers.

Why would e-commerce companies deploy an army of customer care executives when an intelligent program can do similar tasks?

By 2018, popular messengers such as WhatsApp, Kik and WeChat will be acquiring more than 2 billion active users worldwide (combined). Integrating Chatbot into one or more of these services will be a great chance to expand market presence. After all, users are not supposed to download apps of different brands onto their smartphones.

Do you remember what happened to Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence Twitter Conversation bot? The program was shut down immediately because of malfunctioning in the bot.

Probably, Microsoft should have a few lessons from WeChat team who quickly understood that a computer program is still a program hence they attached a dedicated personal human assistant to most of the bot accounts.

It seems natural to automate the customer services in the world of augmented reality and artificial intelligence. However, a reliable Artificial Intelligence powered chatbot must be built by professionals and put to test for several months before release.