ModiFace hasn’t been shy about jumping into the world of tech. They’ve been one of a handful of companies consistently creating apps that use augmented reality to help people virtually try on cosmetics, nail polish, or even new hairstyles. And, now that they’ve established themselves in the world of augmented reality, they have their sights set on one of the next big developments in tech — the chatbot renaissance. At their recent developer conference, Facebook discussed their plans for chatbots in their Messenger service, and it looks like ModiFace took notice.
This week, ModiFace announced that they’ll be introducing a chatbot on Facebook messenger. It’ll work how we imagine most chatbots will work — by sending a message through Facebook Messenger to the brand name. Users will be able to ask the ModiFace chatbot about a number of makeup products, differentiated by brand, color, or shade. In all, the chatbot will have knowledge of some 20,000 beauty products, a number that figures to expand in the near future. And, that’s it — we now live in a world where you can try on makeup using Facebook Messenger!
If you think of chatbots, you might have memories of the entertaining but mostly useless things from the ’90s that teenagers (possibly you at the time) screwed around with. That’s not how they’re being pitched in 2016 — we could give the long explanation, but they’re basically being brought back to make it easier to buy stuff (hey, if we were going to buy that stuff anyway, why not?). Chatbots should (we won’t call it a done deal yet) be able to respond to natural language and offer assistance in finding products, flights, hotels, or any number of goods or services. And, since they’ll essentially be contacts on messenger apps, that also means they might start spamming you, and that we’ll eventually get a separate folder for chatbot messages that will probably be ignored. Not great!
Fortunately, it sounds like ModiFace is doing the chatbot thing right. Not only does it help find the right cosmetics, the chatbot is also pulling in ModiFace’s augmented reality tech. While chatting with the ModiFace chatbot, it’ll be possible to take a selfie within Facebook Messenger and instantly see what the product will look like on your face. It’s the future of online shopping, for a lot more industries than just beauty. ModiFace is just getting on board early.
This story was originally published at ModiFace Chatbot is a Conversational Beauty Advisor on Facebook Messenger