SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook on Tuesday (Wednesday in Manila) extended its reach beyond online socializing by building artificial-intelligence (AI) powered “bots” into its Messenger application to allow businesses to have software engage in lifelike text exchanges.The move announced at the leading online social network’s annual developers conference in San Francisco came as the number of monthly users of Messenger topped 900 million and the Silicon Valley company works to stay in tune with mobile Internet lifestyles.

“We think you should be able to text message a business like you would a friend, and get a quick response,” Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg said as he announced that developers can build bots that could even be better than real people at natural language text conversations.

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