Yet despite the promise of a revolution in how we interact with services and companies online, progress has been utterly miserable - the vast majority of chatbots are gimmicky, pointless or just flat out broken.
But this week I was given great cause for optimism, in the form of Alec Jones, a 14-year-old from Victoria, Canada.
For the past six months, Alec been working on Christopher Bot, a chatbot that helps students keep track of homework they've been given over the course of a week.
