As you may know, SmartBots was using AI chatbots made by Pandorabots.
Pandorabots was a free service at the beginning, but then they switched to a paid model (quite expensive as you may see). However, for several years the old-good free Pandorabot API was working along with a paid version, and our bots were using it. Today, it seems that free features of Pandorabot have gone completely – the old address is not responding anymore.
Meet Google’s API.AI
Thus, we’ve examined the AI chatbots market and decided to switch to Google’s API.AI (https://api.ai/). This is an awesome AI chatbot service which has a single disadvantage compared to Pandorabots: the default chatbot setup is rather dumb and requires training. Well, we will.
Some of SmartBots bots already respond using API.AI, while some are still trying to reach Pandora. This will be solved within a next rolling restart.
Custom AI
As you may know, previously you were able to setup your own AI chatbot with Pandorabots. API.AI also allows using custom chatbots, so you are welcome to create account at https://api.ai/, create your own AI chatbot and train it. Once you are done, please contact us to connect your AI chatbot with SmartBots (this is not an automatic procedure yet but it will).
Had a quick look and it looks to be a very good move. Started my bot and I look forward to training it to know all about my business.
Thanks
Comment by Blueman — May 4, 2017 @ 5:46 am
Not sure what you mean by this? My bot is still at this address… https://www.pandorabots.com/botmaster/en/summary?botid=e33804c9ce377b6b
and I haven’t been asked to pay a thing. She was working nicely too and was getting well trained – perhaps you need to look at your API calls as the site seems to be working for me and still free :)
Lyndka
Comment by Lyndka Cochrane — May 5, 2017 @ 3:08 pm
Well, they restored the functionality. The “botmaster” URL was returning 403 for few days… It is a free version, right – we were using it.
Did you took a look at Google’s API.AI already? Which service is more convenient for your business?
Comment by Glaznah Gassner — May 5, 2017 @ 3:20 pm
The Pandora Bot service was working well – my only worry is that Google will soon monetise the API because that’s what they do. Tey also can be fickle about transaction rates to their API’s – look at Google Translate.
I haven’t tried Google because I’ve already put about 4 man hours in to training the Pandora bot…
Comment by Lyndka Cochrane — May 6, 2017 @ 7:08 am