Does Recast.AI make promises it can't keep?

Another day, another chatbot builder to destroy.

The thing is, they hit a sore nerve on their landing page. It claims, “No more dumb bots - easily create bots that truly understand humans.”

Truly understand. Truly understand. Truly understand. That’s quite a claim.

Let’s leave aside for a minute the question of whether computers are actually capable of understanding. We’ll be generous in our interpretation. What they mean is, you can easily build a bot that will be able to respond to any user query. That response will seem intelligent.

Ok, let’s test that claim. Unfortunately for Recast.AI, they’ve done what I wish every chatbot tool website would do, and doesn’t. They’ve put links to bots made with their tool on their landing page. Prominantly. These had better be good.

Now we’ll see, how good is your tool?

I think you can see where this is going. It’s not good.

The first link is to “La Bringue” that seems to have been renamed Goosebump. Ok Goosebump, do you truly understand?

GB: Hello Daoud, I help you find the best events 🙌 Where are you?

Me: luton

GB: First things first, tell me where you are…

Me: I’m in luton

GB: Sorry… I don’t know about the parties in Luton yet but I hear they’re killer. I’ll work on it I promise 😘

GB: What city are you in?

Me: london

GB: First things first, tell me where you are…

Me: I’m in london

GB: First things first, tell me where you are…

Me: clicks some buttons, navigates a GUI…

GB: London mode activated👌

GB: Now, write your request or click on one of the following options:

Me: clicks on “This weekend”

GB: Boom! The best parties for this weekend:

GB: presents a carousel of parties that admittedly look like they might be interesting, if I were into parties.

I’m sorry, Goosebump. You don’t truly understand.

Never mind. Because actually, Recast AI is rather good. It provides semantic parsing capabilities, much like Dialogflow. And it actually works.

The nicest thing is the set of community contributed intents, together with expressions which allow you to quickly get your bot going, if there happens to be intents which relate to your bot’s desired capabilities.

Recast AI also boasts an impressive list of no less than fourteen different deployment channels. If you need a bot for Twitch, Twilio and Twitter, look no further.

Recast AI’s website is cagey when it comes to pricing. It is free for for individuals, with an (apparently unenforced) limit of three requests per second. For companies they offer “bespoke solutions” at unspecified cost.

In summary, this tool seems to be good. Just ignore what other people make with it, and make something better.

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