G2 Reports Explosive Chatbot Growth
G2, a software review site provider, has observed explosive growth this year in artificial intelligence-infused products, with chatbots acting as a major accelerator for that growth.
In general, the top three fastest-growing software products across G2's 2,000 categories this year were AI tools. But, among them, chatbot software is the fastest-growing artificial intelligence subcategory, beating out 14 others, including machine learning, data science, and virtual assistants.
Those statistics are rooted in G2's more than 2 million reviews on more than 150,000 software products and services.
The firm also noted that chatbots have seen a 261 percent increase in traffic from February 2022 to February 2023.
Additionally, from July 2022 to December 2022, G2 tracked three times more products added to their AI chatbot category than the trending cryptocurrency wallets category. In the last quarter alone, the number of chatbot products added doubled that of crypto wallets.
G2 defines a chatbot as software that is used in place of a human to conduct specific tasks or provide information based on written or spoken requests. This functionality includes both external, customer-facing requests and internal, employee-facing requests. Chatbots allow users to interact with an application in a conversational manner, whether textually or audibly, to perform certain functions.
Although chatbots frequently use some degree of natural language processing or speech recognition to understand written and spoken requests, they primarily function with the help of scripted conversations, the firm points out
Customer support tools, such as live chat software, help desk software, or contact center software, might already have chatbots implemented as a first line of defense when dealing with customers. However, they are becoming more widely used in other applications, such as sales and marketing knowledge bases, according to G2.
The firm further noted that chatbot capabilities are constantly expanding and becoming more frequently implemented in other types of software.