Tencent pulled Microsoft's Chinese AI chatbot

The “bot launched in 2014 and became popular with young men who talked to it to alleviate their loneliness” is in trouble for stepping out of the party line. This is the 3rd in a string of foot-in-virtual-mouth moments by Microsoft-made bots. Gotta give ‘em credit for continuing to try! Only question is, what are they doing with all this conversational data they’re collecting? Will we see the resurgence of Clippy?! 

Why shouldn’t you build a Chat Bot in a Weekend?

Can we just say how much we appreciate this article? Too many players in the space tout that they’re the “easiest way” to make a bot, or the “fastest way.” The thing is, there’s no easy or fast way to make a bot--at least not a good one. The best that bot-building platforms can do is make the tech-part less of a headache so you can focus on the hard, time-consuming part which is the human element. Great graphic of the Bot-building life cycle, too.

MMA Unveils 2017 Global Smarties Shortlist as well as Shortlist for Newly Launched North America Regional Smarties

Interesting to see the shift continue where Mobile now becomes synonymous with Bots. This is especially true when it comes to how creative agencies are responding to their clients’ requests for mobile strategies.  Also pretty cool to see 4 Reply.ai-powered bots make the list (BotBot + GoVoteBot + Ask Cindy Gallop Bot + Kia Niro) :)

Andrew Ng is raising a $150M AI Fund

The former founder of Google’s Brain Team and chief scientist at Baidu has thrown his hat in the AI funding ring with the start of his own Fund. Exciting to see continued momentum in the space, this time by someone so driven by a personal vision of an AI-powered society 💪 🤖