I agree. That is the much bigger question. Texting with software has a huge novelty factor for many people, but it remains to be seen if it's actually more use

I agree. That is the much bigger question. Texting with software has a huge novelty factor for many people, but it remains to be seen if it's actually more useful. GUIs offer a lot of great short cuts that are simply faster to visually read and interact with than reading text and typing - or even saying - a response. I think there are aspects of chat bots that really do offer a new and better user experience, but they're not necessarily the ones being highlighted in demos. Asynchronous interaction with an interface for potentially long-running tasks is wonderful. I can tell an app to, say, find a list of hotels I might like in Argentina and then flip to another app knowing that I'll be notifieda few seconds later when the response is ready. The way forward may be a hybrid interface, where bots can respond with messages that are little mini GUIs. There might be photos to scroll through and a few buttons to click. FB showed off a feature like this at F8 today. Ultimately what would make a bot a really improved experience is if it knows you really well, but that doesn't imply a conversational interface. If you could say "make dinner reservations for tonight" and trust the bot would find the perfect place that would be awesome. That's hard. And it has nothing to do with chat bots per se, just a much better recommendation engine.