> To put it bluntly, a huge proportion of messages will not be understood at all and there is little we can do about it. What we can do is anticipate user frustration and alleviate the situation by offering a little help and managing expectations.

I get the impression that a lot of people have found this to be the case with chatbots these days.

Chatbots can be great for certain situations - when an app needs to initiate the interaction, for example. However, any UI that routinely causes users significant frustration seems pretty problematic. It has to let you do something so awesome and special that you're willing to put up with all that frustration - e.g. a buggy screen sharing app is often still better than no screen sharing app. Is there a compelling enough benefit for chat UIs? Maybe if all you have is text messaging and can't install apps or browse the web?

I'm inclined to think that not trying to be too smart and instead just going with more of a command line interface rather than an "intelligent" agent might be better for users. Have people developing chatbots found that to be the case?