Microsoft Rolls Out Skype Bots For Mac And Web

Microsoft is doing its best to enhance the Skype experience, angling to offer not only a lively communication tool but also a smart one capable of interacting with users and offering suggestions. Its first bots have already launched for Mac and Web.

The aim of these bots is to bring expertise, products, services and entertainment into the daily messaging experience of Skype. For the time being, the bots are present in chats only but Microsoft is planning to insert them in audio and video calling as well. You can simply chat with a bot or you can ask it to perform specific tasks (limited for the time being).

Bots are currently available in Australia, Canada, UK, Ireland, India, New Zealand, Singapore and the US.

If you’re curious to test out the bots, follow these steps:

Skype for Web, select “Discover Bots” on the left toolbar to see a list of available Bots.
On Mac, tap on the “Contacts” from the menu and select “Add Bot….” to view a list of available Bots.

The main Skype bots for the time being are Murphy and Summarize. Murphy can help you to find and create images for the situations when questions can’t be answered by words alone. We’ve all had such moments when we could not find the right words to express ourselves, yet we felt that an image would summarize all the ideas. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Summarize is designed to give you an overview of a web page that you don’t have time to read. In other words, the bot will give you the main idea, saving precious minutes of your time.

As useful as these bots can be, bear in mind that they will have access to your Skype Name and any chat messages or content that you or other group participants share with it since they need to analyze the content of your chats to offer the best possible answers. But are you ready to accept this level of transparency?