SXSW Day 3: Here come the bots.

By Chris Wexler, Senior Vice President, Executive Director of Media and Analytics

Every so often down here in Austin you can just feel the change. It is in the air. Twitter. The Sharing Economy. Live video (#ripPerisocpe).

My impression is that we are at one of those sea change moments. Maybe bigger than the ones listed above. There are two crazy hot tracks at SXSW this year, AI and bots. Sessions filled, even big rooms. (I lost count at 22 sessions/meet ups/lounges about bots and at least double that for AI.)

Why is this?

Simply put – the consumer has shot ahead of technology yet again. Wait Chris, you say. Technology leads, not follows. We look to the nerds to tell us not the other way around.

That is simply a misread of how technology evolves. It moves to solve human problems that exist. And right now organizations and causes have struggled to do one thing. How the hell do we scale 1:1 communication without breaking the bank.

Over the past 18 months there has been a revolution in AI and bot interactions on messaging platforms. And why does this matter to your business? Because there are more monthly user on messaging apps than social media users.

Really.