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Facebook has acquired Ozlo, an AI startup based in Palo Alto, California, for an undisclosed amount. The team will be folded into Facebook’s Messenger AI operation.

Ozlo built an AI agent capable of understanding text-based conversations, pulling from a knowledge graph of two billion entities to help answer user queries.

See Also: Elon Musk says Mark Zuckerberg’s AI understanding is “limited”

Before the site was pulled, Ozlo showed an example of a user asking if a restaurant is “group friendly”, and the AI agent finding the correct information from the internet and reviews to answer the query.

Ozlo uses “probabilistic assertions of truth”, allowing the AI agent to provide answers with more depth than other assistants. Instead of simply listing what the reviews say or giving a yes or no answer, Ozlo uses data gathered to “understand real-life nuances.”

Most of the 30 employees will move to the Messenger team, where they will work on existing AI efforts, according to Re/Code.

Facebook’s AI agents are all embedded into the Messenger platform. Users receive suggestions when a certain word or phrase has been said, like “book an Uber” or “where are you?”, and M will load the appropriate app or service.

The social network has also launched chatbots, which allow customers to send queries to brands and receive instant replies. There are hundreds of bots available, although most of them have a human on standby to handle any issues.

The robots were priced at around $8,000, not including electricity and repairs, making them cheaper than human staff. But except for the novelty value, it was a somewhat failed experiment.

However, robots are being used increasingly in customer support and care in a range of capacities. While there are none operating with complete autonomy, there are plenty of examples where robots have a functional purpose which they are successfully delivering.

You’re no doubt familiar with Pepper Robots, who partake a range of tasks including helping people at train stations in France, providing information and direction on trains. In Spain and France, they work in department stores, highlighting products and providing directions.

You may have seen Japan’s Henn na Hotel that is staffed largely by robots in both front desk and customer service tasks. But it’s not merely a one-off. Robotics company Savioke have created a robot called Relay for hotel delivery service. It can navigate autonomously, ride the elevator by itself, and carry items such as toothbrushes, towels, and snacks to guest rooms. It’s currently employed successfully in several US hotels. The robot – which uses Wi-Fi and 3D cameras to navigate around the hotel – doesn’t have arms, so it has to rely on its display screen to communicate with guests.

In Belgium, The Marriott Hotel Ghent employs “Mario” – designed to provide an extra level of client experience. Mario is deployed in the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, Exhibitions) market for a welcome or farewell speech. Like many corporate mid-level execs, he also gives classic PowerPoint presentations. Mario sprung from the collection of Nao robots created by Aldebaran – the team behind Pepper, too.

Aldebaran’s Nao family of robots are also utilized at Hilton McLean in Virginia where “Connie,”  the first Watson-enabled robot concierge in the hospitality industry is employed.  Connie draws on domain knowledge from Watson and WayBlazer to inform guests on local tourist attractions, dining recommendations and hotel features and amenities. Using a combination of Watson APIs, including Dialog, Speech to Text, Text to Speech and Natural Language Classifier, Connie greets guests upon arrival and answers questions about hotel amenities, services and hours of operation.

Nao robots also have more serious  functions to serve. In Canada, they come in the form ofMEDi, employed at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. The robots are are specifically programmed with sets of behaviors that match the steps of a medical procedure, providing pain management support during medical procedures.

A study at the hospital involving 57 children between the ages of four and nine found the robots helped ease fears when children came in for flu shots. According to Tanya Beran, a professor of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary who helped program the robots, she says among those kids who interacted with the robot, the hospital reduced children’s pain and anxiety by half. MEDi is programmed to interact with kids for a wide range of procedures, starting with flu vaccines and blood draws and since expanding to include IV and catheter removal and brain-activity tests. Beran says they’re looking to add cast-cutting to MEDi’s skills soon.The use of robots in aged-care is also on the rise. Often a poorly paid, thus understaffed, sector, it’s not unreasonable to see a future where basic work and support tasks will be performed by robots or people assisted by robots or exoskeletons.

RIBA in Japan is the first robot that can lift up or set down a real human from or to a bed or wheelchair. RIBA does this using its very strong human-like arms and by novel tactile guidance methods using high-accuracy tactile sensors. RIBA was developed by integrating RIKEN’s control, sensor, and information processing and TRI’s material and structural design technologies.

Robots in hospitals also have a part of play in germ prevention. Xenex “germ zapping robots” are currently operational in a series of hospitals and aged care facilities in the US. The Xenex robot uses pulsed xenon to create broad spectrum, high intensity light covering the entire germicidal spectrum. The light quickly destroys harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi and bacterial spores on surfaces inside the facility.

Clearly the advent of machine learning means that robots are getting smarter. There’s also greater efforts to make robots more lifelike; This month saw the release of Jia Jia, developed at the University of Science and Technology of China, a human-looking robot which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips, and move its body.

The robot is not dissimilar in appearance to Chihira Junco, a robot released last year by Toshiba, employed as a greeter at a waterpark and public events. Junko speaks Japanese, English and Chinese and incorporates Toshiba’s speech synthesis technology.

Perhaps the most interesting robot I’ve seen of late comes from Boston Dynamics, who you may recall bought us the big dog robot. “Atlas, The Next Generation” is designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings. It is specialized for mobile manipulation, and electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects. This version of Atlas is about 5′ 9″ tall  – about a head shorter than the DRC Atlas – and weighs 180 lbs. It’s not pretty enough to be functional in customer care but it sets an interesting – if a little sinister – look into robots of the future.

Another day, another smart home system looking to break into the market. This time, a team of ex-ASUS engineers have launched a Kickstarter for SmartAll, an AI butler that connects to smart devices.

The hub, which is on sale at Kickstarter, is a small camera with an LED strip around it. It is able to recognize up to five family members and customize a room to their liking — it is also able to spot intruders and create a “panic mode” where the lights and alarms turn on. Users are able to livestream the camera’s POV from a mobile device and save footage. On top of all the camera capabilities, the hub also understands voice commands, like “turn on the television” or “turn up the heating”.

See Also: Scotts Miracle-Gro platform gives you an IoT green thumb

Once all the smart devices are connected to the butler, it will begin learning patterns and start to automatically make decisions after seven days. If you boil the kettle at 8.30am each morning or turn off the lights at 11pm everyday, it will do that task for you.

It should be noted that while SmartAll supports over 1,000 devices, including Nest’s thermostat, the iRobot Roomba, and a selection of smart home door locks, it hasn’t launched any other smart home devices.

That might be a bit of a strain when it comes to connecting everything up and ensuring that devices work correctly. For one-function items like a door lock or a kettle that might not be too hard, but for a vacuum things like what rooms to clean and how long to clean may be hard to compute.

SmartAll already has an SDK ready for developers to build on the platform. It plans to add health management and emotion recognition to the hub in future updates, giving you food tips and changing songs to fit your current mood.

On Kickstarter, SmartAll is selling its butler for $199, though it has an early bird still available for the first 500, at $149. One year of cloud recording service costs an additional $100 or $299 with the butler.