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Guardian chatbot illustration
Guardian chatbot illustration Photograph: Guardian
Guardian chatbot illustration Photograph: Guardian

Introducing the Guardian Chatbot

This article is more than 7 years old

We’ve been experimenting with chatbots and today we’re pleased to officially launch our bot for Facebook Messenger

We would like to invite you to subscribe to our new chatbot.

About eight weeks ago, we created a couple of prototype chatbots and quietly promoted them on our social channels. We’ve received very positive feedback from users. Our data provides further evidence people found them useful. We thought now was the right time to release our Guardian news bot into the wild.

Messaging apps account for a disproportionate amount of time we spend on our phones. Whatsapp has over one billion active users per month. Facebook Messenger also achieved this milestone in July. There a number of other messaging apps with huge followings too - such as WeChat, Kakao, LINE and Viber. Usage is now surpassing social networks.

Chatbots are not a new thing, but have started to be more widely discovered. For example, WeChat has exploded in the last three years. It’s success has fundamentally changed in the way people interact with the Internet - from hailing a taxi to shopping for clothes. This has not gone unnoticed by their competitors and many have built chatbot capabilities into their products.

We have chosen to launch on Facebook Messenger to engage with our established community on Facebook and the capabilities of the platform. Depending on the success of the Guardian bot on Messenger, we will look to introduce it to messaging platforms.

Get your morning briefing when you want it

Once you’ve said hello to our bot, it will ask you whether you would like to subscribe and when you would like it delivered. The next day, look out for your morning briefing. Our journalists will be curating the briefing each day from Monday 7th November in the UK (US and Australia will be available soon).

You can change the time, change the edition or unsubscribe at any time. If you’re a jet-setter, the bot will do its best to send the briefing at the appropriate timezone.

Ask the bot for “headlines” or “most popular” and it will message you back with the top 5 stories. Ask for your favourite topic / section by messaging the name of it, like “football” or “lifestyle”.

There is plenty more to come

Our work on this bot is far from finished - we have plenty of ideas to test. We really value your ideas and feedback too. Please email the team at chatbot.feedback@theguardian.com.

Getting started

There are a few of ways to get started with the Guardian bot

  • Go to the Guardian Facebook page via the Facebook app and tap “Message”
  • Search for “The Guardian” in Facebook Messenger and tap “Get started”

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