Chat Bot

Abstract

Chatbots are becoming increasingly important as gateways to digital services and information used in areas such as customer service, healthcare, education, and workplace support. However, there is limited knowledge about the impact of chatbots on individual, collective, and societal levels. Moreover, there are still many challenges that must be overcome before chatbots can realize their full potential. Correspondingly, chatbots have become an important research area in recent years. To support the advancement of knowledge in this emerging research area, we propose a research agenda in the form of future directions and issues to be addressed through chatbot research. This proposal culminates years of discussion in the CONVERSATIONS workshop series on chatbot research. After thorough exploratory analysis among workshop participants, we explore future directions around six topics of interest: (a) users and their impact; (b) user experience and design; (c) Frameworks and Platforms, (d) Collaborative Chatbots, (e) ) Democratization of Chatbots, and (e) Ethics and Privacy. For each of these topics, we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art, discuss key research challenges, and suggest promising directions for future research. The six themes are detailed from a five-year perspective and should be considered as elements of an interdisciplinary research program co-developed by passionate researchers in the field.