I'm pretty sure that GPT-3 and statistics-based approaches to bots aren't going to be truly convincing anytime soon. But there's another definition of "chatbots" that consumer-facing brands use every day to triage questions, attempt to answer them using good but not mind-blowing ML, and then escalate to a human being if/when the problem can't be solved. There is already a thriving market for these "dumb" bots that aren't attempting to have an uncanny valley type conversation - they advertise that they're bots upfront, don't try to be too cute, and provide the escape valve to a real agent when necessary.
Yet triaging questions is often made simpler by provinding another type of UI, like simple buttons in a funnel for example. That's what makes chatbots gimmicky in my opinion.
You're right, but that's not always true, and there's plenty of good use cases where a conversational experience is better. For example, if someone is trying to return something, you might ask them what they ordered. Picking from a list of 1000 items isn't a great UX. Datepickers are way more annoying to use than typing in "Jan 6 2022". The best chatbots I've used (and built) alternate between more a button-like interface vs. eliciting conversational answers in the appropriate context.
Sounds kinda like the chatbot becomes a fuzzy search interface, difference is the presentation. Regardless, definitely better than picking from 1000 product list. I think I would like a natural language (type-in) date picker with a good preview of what the result will be.
