Brace Yourself for the Coming Bot Apocalypse: VB’s MobileBeat 2016, July 12-13

In the wake of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple’s successive announcements of their chatbot integrations during the last year, everyone from mobile developers to huge consumer companies seems to be jumping on the accelerating bot-wagon. Leading technology publication and events company VentureBeat, which has been closely following the bot trend, is dedicating MobileBeat 2016, its annual flagship event next week, to exploring how bots and artificial intelligence are ushering in the latest paradigm shift in mobile. Next week’s conference will be the first major industry-wide event designed specifically to help industry leaders, investors, and cutting-edge AI developers discover hot bot applications and learn best practices.

Thousands of developers have been creating AI-based conversation bots on the Alexa platform.

According to VentureBeat, more than 25 companies, spanning industries from travel and entertainment to financial services, are expected to debut their bot technologies at MobileBeat 2016. Some of the familiar names on the roster include Fandango, Spotify, Pizza Hut and Whole Foods Market. More than a few travel booking giants, including Priceline/Booking.com, Expedia, Hipmunk, TripAdvisor and Trivago, will also be attending the conference to scout for bot technologies to help them engage consumers through mobile messaging apps — and some are expected to make weighty announcements.

Matt Marshall, Founder of VentureBeat | Credit: venturebeat.com

VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall revealed that the conference will include an inaugural demo of a bot technology that operates an unnamed country’s public transportation system. Wow!

In one tantalizing program note, Rohit Prasad, Amazon’s vice president of Machine Learning for Alexa and Speech, will start Day 2 with a keynote address entitled “Sexiest Opportunities in AI.” According to Amazon, thousands of developers have been creating AI-based conversation bots on the Alexa platform, which has been gaining traction during the past year. Prasad will share with conference attendees Amazon’s learnings about natural language processing and his thoughts on how businesses can leverage artificial intelligence most successfully.

Newscenter.io will be reporting live from the event, providing up-to-the-minute coverage and exclusive interviews with speakers. Stay tuned!