Most research literature falls into two camps: original research findings or surveys. This article fits neither profile, and is instead a puff piece more suitable to People magazine than ACM interactions.

The authors have created a light and breezy review of the current chatbot trend. Siri, Alexa, Google--and who’s that Samsung chatterer? Bobby? Bixby?--constitute a definite wave, a “next big thing,” in human-computer interfaces (HCI). The article is short (2600 words) and provides a few references, so if you’re active in the HCI field, it’s probably worth a quick scan. However, I’m not sure there’s any real value in it. Natural language interfaces are useful. There are a bunch of them out there and more on the way. That’s not news.

The apparent point of this article, expressed about midway through, is that other HCI researchers should start spending less time on graphical interface design and more time on conversational interface design. That’s a reasonable and innocuous recommendation, but seems more appropriate as a simple letter to the editor than the end result of a research grant.

I was also surprised by their characterization of natural language interfaces as “new” and “exotic.” While new instances are improved over past versions, chatbots are not new. ELIZA, circa 1964, was a chatbot perceived by some as the first program to pass the Turing test. Verbots enjoyed a small heyday in pre-2000 artificial intelligence (AI) circles thanks to ontology improvements. Natural language interfaces have been continuously explored for decades, and make noticeable strides every decade or so. They have been consumer commodities for several years now.

In the end, these nitpicks are unimportant, and it is not worth writing or reading any more words about the article. Take 30 seconds to skim it and then go back to what you were doing.