Close encounters of a bot kind Chat bots have been around for sometime now. But I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the change happening all around, and haven’t been paying too much attention to the little guys. However they have been multiplying rapidly, and it’s getting harder and harder to ignore them. Maybe I’ve been avoiding them because of my experience with the bots’ distant cousins, the assistants. Things haven’t gone too smoothly in my interactions with Siri, with most conversations coming to an abrupt end, with something like this. I don’t know about you but I find it silly to aimlessly repeat, “Siri, play the next song” while jogging in public, though it’s probably not her fault that she can’t pick up my Indian accent. Dialogues with Google Assistant have a similar ending, “If you just said something, I didn’t hear what it was.” Though I haven’t interacted much with Cortana and Echo, my guess is they are in the same league. It seemed to me that AI isn’t ready for Prime Time in India. And then I was introduced to Telegram, the open source messenger app. In India, WhatsApp rules the world of messaging. Everyone is on it. Kids, teachers, housewives, executives, doctors, and even the police. I have never even tried Telegram, Didn’t seem much point as it was going to be impossible to get all those millions of my countrymen to switch from WhatsApp. But then a French friend told me Telegram is popular there, and one reason is your phone number stays private, as you can connect via a username. So I installed Telegram, and had my first encounter with the chat bots. These chat bots are basically Telegram accounts run by software, instead of people. What makes them bots is they have a certain level of AI which allows them to have conversations with you, and do things for you. And the best part is it’s all text so there’s no idiocy of misunderstanding what I said. So what do I want done for me? Well, I had been trying to download a tennis training video from the Youtube but there seemed to be issues with copyright and other stuff, which complicated things. I thought I would see if a bot could simplify the task. To get a bot for Telegram, I had to go to the on my mobile browser. I searched for downloader and a few popped up. I clicked on the ‘Add to Telegram’ link on Youtube downloader. It opened up in Telegram with instructions of how to download videos, audio and search for videos. I then clicked ‘start,’ at which it asked me to select my language. (The site is in Dubai or thereabouts as .me is Middle East which explains the Arabic) Telegram bot store I replied English, and the bot asked me to give it the video link. After I did so, it informed me it was processing my request. A moment later, it asked me if I wanted to download the file as an audio or video, and when I replied video, it gave me a choice of formats. I chose the 720p format. The bot then asked if I wanted it sent as a Telegram file or a video link. It also mentioned files larger than 50MB will only be sent as a link. My file was 80MB so I replied link, and the bot sent me the link. I copy pasted into VLC, and that was it. I pondered about what had just happened. I had downloaded a video I wanted in a format of my choice. And all that without my having to do anything at all except reply to a few pertinent questions from a bot. Doing it myself would have required a lot more effort. That was pretty impressive. I will definitely be checking out more bots. Meanwhile I tried to thank the bot, and that was the only time it revealed its bottiness by asking me to, “please send a valid youtube url or video id, For any help send /help.” As I exited Telegram, one question came to my mind. How is a bot different from an app? It wasn’t hard to figure out the answer. The bot is the 21st Century human’s Man Friday. I had got the entire video downloaded by going to my messaging app, and just requesting a contact called ‘YouTube Downloader’ to do it for me. The fact that the contact happened to be a bot, didn’t change the fact that it all happened in a simple chat. No hunting for an app to do the job. No figuring out how to download the app. No figuring out how to use the app. No worrying if there’s enough space for the app on my phone. No trying to recall the app’s name. No constant updating of the app. In fact, there’s this big debate going on if bots will replace apps. I don’t think so. They will co-exist as there are certain things that each do better than the other. After all, I finally saved that video in an app, VLC. Come to think of it. If YouTube decides to sue for copyright violations in downloading the video, who will it sue? I who asked for the video download, the bot maker who made it possible, or the bot who actually did it? Can you sue a bot?
