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Comment by skrowl | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that they didn't mention monetization / profitability. Even basic Google / Bing API usage will start to add up on any moderately popular chatbot with some kind of search functionality. Without the ability to serve ads, it's pretty difficult to even break even.

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Chatbots are a fancy name for when your API is accessible through some well-known IM service.

They come with all of the monetization issues of APIs, but they're surfaced in an environment where you have no pre-existing relationship with the client, and you can't even charge them for access.

This essentially limits the business model to where you give away the chatbot and make money some other way; or you recognize you have no business model and do it anyway.

That's a very good point indeed. In that particular case the diagnostic chatbot is a proof-of-concept to grab attention to the diagnosis+NLP API offered by Infermedica, and also serve as an example app.

This is 100% correct. The chatbot is currently a proof-of-concept and our first take on a conversational symptom checker. Our core business is the Infermedica API and patient prescreening tools based on the diagnostic engine.

Wouldn't a more graphical implementation of the symptom checker, possibly with a tree the user can follow in a wizard style be more effective than a simple texted based chat?

Could be. But you need a chatbot to compare the performance. :)

Sadly most bots today are solutions looking for a problem.

Our customers (thankfully) are typically looking for ways to engage with their existing customer base better, and/or deliver their existing commercial services in a better way.

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