Google

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Munnabhai helps Microsoft launch Bollywood �Bots�


Buoyed by the success of the Munnabhai Bot on MSN India�s Windows Live Messenger, which allows online users to talk to Munnabhai, answer his riddles and win movie tickets and audio CDs, Microsoft is all set to introduce more Bots in the next three to six months time in India.

Chat Bots or Bots like the Munnabhai Bot, are computer programmes that are designed to scan for keywords in a conversation and in turn intelligently provide responses from a local database.

Head of Programming, MSN India and Windows Live, Krishna Prasad told moneycontrol that educational bots would soon be launched in India. He says, �In the next three to six months, you will witness the launch of many bots that will provide users with everything from flight information to cricket scores. This is an international product and right now we are customizing them for India.�

He adds, �It depends on how much time you take to train and populate the questions for the Bot. When Munnabhai came out, we had only ten questions and answers in the database, but over time as we added more questions to make the Bot smarter. It takes about a month to train the Bot. Many Bollywood related Bots would be launched soon. We feel that Bots will play a key role in providing a number of backend services.�

As part of its six-year anniversary celebrations, MSN India, unveiled on Wednesday, a new look MSN India home page, including four new channels and added services such as Windows Live Domains, Live Messenger and Live Search for online users in India. This service could soon be available on low-end mobile handsets in India by the end of this year, according to MSN India.

No comments: