AI BOTS & TOOLS
[IOS] PICKY ALBUM Free | www.polarr.co If you’re someone who goes trigger-happy when taking photos, but then can’t decide which one you like more than the other, artificial intelligence could help you with that. Picky Album, with its neat and easy-to-use interface, is an AI-powered photo curator that chooses the best images within a group, then automatically enhances details. After that, it’s ready to be shared on social media as individual pictures with just a tap of an icon.
[ ANDROID, IOS, WP10, WEB BROWSERS ] ALEX Free | tinyurl.com/TLA60-Alex
Tax time each year is always harrowing, but the ATO’s AI-powered bot called Alex is there to help. Pushing through with its “digital by default” strategy, the Australian Tax Office teamed up with Nuance Communications to implement the US software giant’s own virtual assistant tech into the government organisation’s website. Alex has the ability to address customer queries across various categories via text — just type in a question on the ATO website and Alex will answer.
[ KIK ] ZO Free | earlyaccess.zo.ai
Zo is Microsoft’s latest attempt at a chatbot, after their first (Tay) turned into a racist Trump supporter, and although Zo is in early access and comes with all the quirks you’d expect from that, you can chat to it now via Kik. While some of the replies were nonsensical, we did have a brief existential chat about purpose and what Zo enjoyed (“poetry” and “not much of anything”), although when questioned on politics, the reply I received was an emoji of a chicken and a fart.
[ MESSENGER, KIK, TELEGRAM ] DURIAN THE BOT botlist.co/bots/1843-durian-the-bot
Do you need a steady supply of fresh, hot memes in your life? Durian is a funnybot that sends you a meme every time you rate the previous one. The content seems a little underwhelming, and maybe that’s reflected by the rather soft rating system of ‘fine’ and ‘crap’, but there is something addictive about the perpetual stream of funnies. We tried this using the Kik messaging service and it would quite often cut off the text of the meme, but apart from that, it worked.