Bing appears to be testing the use of a chatbot in some of its search engine results pages. Search Engine Land found that a chatbot was appearing in the local search results for queries relating to restaurants in the Seattle area. The chatbot appears at the bottom of the listings for specific restaurants, below the restaurant's name, address, phone number and reviews. When you click on the chatbot, it opens up a Skype-powered chat window, and the chatbot appears capable of answering questions relating to directions, parking options, table reservations, discounts and more. Currently, it seems that the chatbot is only appearing for a very limited number of search terms in a very localised area. However, the fact that Bing is testing the feature at all suggests that we can expect chatbots and AI to become more and more prevalent in the online experience in the future.Â
