Bots Thanking Bots

Late last week, it was revealed that Facebook has seemingly taken either lazy or apathy to a whole new level. Yes, you can apparently now reply to text messages from the social network with a “1” to wish a friend a happy birthday. Or rather, to have Facebook wish your friend a happy birthday on your behalf (and from your account).

This is amazing, dreadful, and undoubtedly the future all wrapped up in one little text-based payload. Because typing “happy birthday!” means typing thirteen more characters than typing “1”. But it also means loading Facebook and loading that friend’s profile page. Facebook is whittling down the barrier to interaction (at least until everyone is on Facebook all the time, in which case opening the SMS app would be the barrier).

Which leads to the next question: at what point do bots start talking to bots? You know, why should you have to type “thank you!” when you can reply to a text with “1”? Or better yet, why should you have to type the “1” at all? If Facebook knows you want to say “thank you” to everyone (bots included) who wished you a happy birthday, shouldn’t they just give you the option to let Facebook do that for you on your behalf?

And that leads to the notion of having Facebook automatically say “happy birthday” to a friend on their birthday each year. If you can do that and then the Facebook “thank you” bot can reply to the “happy birthday” bot, we would have some hot bot-on-bot action.

We’re just now getting used to the first layer of interacting with bots for various services. But having bots chat with other bots is the next logical step that probably isn’t that far off. In many ways, it may be easier to make happen because it removes the flawed human variable in the equation. I’m both kidding and entirely not kidding.

Where this gets weird — okay, even more weird — is when you consider others who are looking at the profile page of the birthday boy/gal. They’ll see you leaving the “happy birthday” wish and they’ll see the “thank you” reply, but they won’t realize that what they’re really watching is a sort of bot kabuki theater performance.

In the movie Her, Theodore’s job involves writing personal letters for other people who can’t muster the effort for whatever reason. This sort of “Uber for cardwriting” model is a quirky way to present a dystopian theme (as well as a theme for the film itself) for a not-too-distant future. But the bot scenario above seems much more realistic. And closer.

Samantha writing the personal letters on your behalf. And then responding to them…