This might be the first really useful Facebook Messenger bot

When I recently received an email asking me to try a Facebook Messenger bot called ‘And Chill’ I sighed.

Aren’t Messenger bots all overhyped and useless right now? And invoking the tired ‘Netflix and Chill’ meme for the name of a product in mid-2016 should be a crime against technology. And yet… And Chill is the first Facebook Messenger bot I can see myself using more than a couple of times.

The easiest way to explain it and why it’s useful is with a couple of screenshots:

As you can see, it’s a conversational way of getting movie recommendations — like having a friend with a deep knowledge of movies at your fingertips.

As with many apps of its type right now, it’s using a mix of automation and human curation. Some may see that as cheating, but if it works, that’s fine by me.

Jake Cohn, founder of Sense Technologies, the company behind And Chill, tells me, “I’ve always had a big problem with recommendations, so I started experimenting with ways that could make the experience of finding a movie to watch better.

“Conversational UX stood out as the right answer because you can naturally give your movie preferences in your own voice. At the moment, AI isn’t all the way there yet to do things on its own, so a blend of AI andhuman curation is the way to go, at least until the AI gets the point where it can be as good as a human.

“So far, I’ve mostly hacked things together myself and have developers that I know give me guidance and feedback. I’m not great at it, so I’m actively looking for skilled developers.”

Conversational interfaces have been mooted as the next leap forward for all kinds of use cases. But while shopping and news consumption can be overly complicated, and services like Poncho currently struggle to offer a better service than traditional apps, And Chill is offering a service that’s pretty much bang on, assuming it scales well as usage grows.

…despite that name.