Personalize Bots to Perform Mundane Tasks? Implications for Off-site Optimization.

Bots are trending in the artificial intelligence industry. I don't mean the infamous Russian 'bots' which are mainly people-run, created to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. No. I mean online bots that receive, process and respond to information; they perform the mundane tasks that we'd normally complete. According to Kurt Wagner from CNBC, bots range from online chatbots that simulate conversation, to bots that schedule appointments and bots that provide customer service support (e.g. respond to inquiries). The bot industry is growing by the day and large companies such as Google (with Google Now), Microsoft, Slack, Kik and now Facebook are increasingly creating bots that perform simple tasks.

Google's Fresh Bots (which constantly return to updated sites) and Deep Crawlers (which scout sites monthly) index updates for Google, that is, perform a relatively simple task which would otherwise require an enormous undertaking for humans to complete. Just think about having to register updates as they happen, every day, hour and even minute for thousands of sites. If it were not for bots, this would be nearly impossible. What if we were to create a customizable bot service that performs one task for your regular, on a budget, entrepreneur? The bot can learn to send you reminders or schedule reminders, or to use your credit card to buy toilet paper every month. In effect, to complete one mundane task that you do often and would save so much time if it were outsourced to an online robot.

I've tried to search for a service like this, but I've come up with zero results and prototypes at best. I'd be intrigued to see where this opportunity goes and if something like this comes out in the near future.

In any case, these bots could completely change the possibilities for off-site optimization. Just think about it, a bot that messages companies requests for backlinks? Bots that check your site and make sure you're using internal links, deep links for other sites, or to make sure that "click here" doesn't appear but instead the name of the page, etc. A bot to complete the relatively easy tasks which a busy entrepreneur may not have time to complete or a novice start-up not familiar with optimization would know about. Bots that help startups to start up, by taking care of the little things that can make a big difference in the long run.