Chatbots seem to be popping up everywhere nowadays. And not just Alexa, but those helpful "people" who IM you on every site to help with customer service.

These are certainly not new. Back in the Stone Age when I was in college and iPods were gaining popularity, Joe Millionaire was winning over our hearts, and we were constantly perfecting our away messages on AIM, there was a chatbot called Smarterchild that we all talked to. Of course, we would just curse at it and laugh hysterically at it's "offended" response. College was a wild time.

But now chatbots are getting smarter, or at least more responsive. And people are happily using them. We're heading for Westworld-level customer service robots, people! Don't say I didn't warn you. "These violent delights have free-return-policy ends." Or something. I don't know, I'm still a few episodes behind.

Anyway, according to a study on Convince & Convert, "as of 2018, 15 percent of American adults say they have used a chatbot to interact with a company in the prior 12 months."

And according to Ideal.com, 35 percent of people who use chatbots expect to get detailed responses to inquiries. Also, they found that 64 percent of people believe the top benefit of them is to get 24-hour service, and that 55 percent of people believe the top benefit is getting an instant response.

Read the whole blog.