As enterprises continue headlong in building conversational experiences for both customers and employees alike, Microsoft is steadily bolstering its suite of conversational bot solutions to make AI more available and accessible. This week Microsoft announced the acquisition of XOXCO, a software product design and development company responsible for the development of Slack’s Howdy as well as creators of the enterprise chatbot development suite Botkit.

The addition continues Microsoft’s push into offering a complete set of development and deployment services for building and hosting conversational agents and other Intelligent Assistance offerings. Conversational bots offer the natural interface for digital content and services and Microsoft’s Bot Framework has been an integral platform for industry growth.

In a blog post announcing the acquisition, Lilly Chang, Corporate Vice President of Conversational AI, wrote: “At Microsoft, we envision a world where natural language becomes the new user interface, enabling people to do more with what they say, type and input, understanding preferences and tasks and modeling experiences based on the way people think and remember … With this acquisition, we are continuing to realize our approach of democratizing AI development, conversation and dialog, and integrating conversational experiences where people communicate.”

The signed agreement to acquire XOXCO, comes on the heels of the acquisition of conversational AI specialist Semantic Machines in May. By improving accuracy for conversational user interfaces, Microsoft is committing to the business value for companies to engage conversationally with their prospects, customers and clients. The ability to offer a powerful platform of AI services and tools shows Microsoft is infusing intelligence across all its products and services.

In addition to the XOXOC acquisition announcement, Microsoft also gave additional technology updates for Azure Cognitive Services and Machine Learning integrations, as well as a set of guidelines for making responsible conversational AI. Given the PR nightmare a couple years back with Tay — the Twitter chatbot that quickly turned racist and misogynistic thanks to unchecked user input — Microsoft outlined 10 ethical suggestions, such as the importance of being transparent about using a bot in your products, making sure your bot is designed to respect cultural norms and guard it against misuse, and ensuring your bot is fair to everyone and respects privacy. 

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles