Experimenting with Chat Bots

October 30th, 2024

Chat bots are an interesting form of artificial intelligence, mainly because the user can have simulated human conversations with a robot. Chat bot technology can help customers find answers to common questions, answer inquiries, and even provide basic support to improve the user experience. I experimented with two programs called Voiceflow and Tidio to learn how to create these bots and understand the way they work. I managed to create very simple chat bots that are not super impressive, but efficient in the topic they are focused on. By using the tools necessary to create these helpers, I started to see the potential of this new emerging technology made to make our lives easier and efficient.

Voiceflow

When using Voiceflow I learned that chat bots need knowledge in order to respond to specific commands from the user. At first, I had difficulty getting used to the user interface, but as I started going through the website, I began to understand how to create a quick and basic chat bot. There are many features on the service I have yet to understand, but the basic components helped me create a chat bot that is knowledgeable in video game releases and news.

I ‘fed’ the bot many gaming news websites including IGN, Gamer Rant, and Gamespot so that I can ask it questions about upcoming releases and updates. These websites also include blogs and opinions by gamers on popular games. I then added online stores that sell digital games for the Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, and Steam. This makes the chat bot an expert on prices and availability for certain games which comes in handy when the user is curious or trying to make a decision when buying a game.

After including all the knowledge I could think of, I asked it questions regarding games and it answered them well for the most part. I would ask it simple gaming questions and also more complex and it responded accurately and quickly. Only once did I experience a hallucination while talking with my bot. For example, it mixed the names of two games when I asked “What the Newest Call of Duty was called, giving a completely wrong answer. However, for the most part the chat bot worked well and amazed me how well they can gather information from various websites.

You can see my demonstration below:

Tidio

My experience with Tidio was a bit difficult in the beginning because of the complex user interface of the service. Honestly, I felt more overwhelmed with this service than Voiceflow. There were just so many features and descriptions that it became a bit of sensory overload. I started to feel better once I watched a few tutorials on the service, especially on the flows page. I learned how to edit each component in the flow and see how they work by testing out the chat bot after each edit. I also had trouble looking for the right template, and once I finally found it, I decided to create a very simple chat bot using the “FAQ for Online Store” template.

The chat bot I created tells the user about specific rules in different sports. I modified the flow by changing text within the responses from the AI and the decisions the user can make. I used the four most popular sports in the US including soccer, basketball, football, and baseball. The chat bot’s job is to inform the user about the main basic rules of each sport. This bot is very simple and can be used for websites that cover sports or betting like ESPN or Bet365.

Overall, I learned how to create a basic chat bot using the flows section of the service. The service still offers many other categories making the chat bot more customizable and efficient. So I want to learn more of this service so I can create professional complex AI projects worthy of being on an official website. I overall enjoyed these little experiments using chat bot services and may consider becoming an expert on them to enhance the user experience.

Here is a video of my demonstration:

By Alberto Flores