Marijuana Marketer Creates Trump AI Chatbot for Facebook (Yes, Really)

A digital media company that provides marketing for the marijuana industry has created an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot modeled after US Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

There are many ways to follow that sentence, but, really, the only thing that makes sense is a question.

“Why?”

High Times for The Donald

The short answer: Bang Digital Media, a subsidiary of Bang Holdings Corp., wants a piece of the AI Facebook bot pie. And to establish proof of concept, Bang’s team developed a Trump-obsessed chatbot called “The Donald.” 

The team chose Trump “primarily due to the relative ease of attracting his enthusiastic supporters for engagement,” Bang explained in a statement.

Steve Berke, CEO of Bang Holdings, claims the technology (not the Trump chatbot) will disrupt the sales and customer service industry.

“Although still in beta, we believe we are developing the future of sales and customer service,” he explained, adding that an AI powered chatbot that can speak intimately with a thousand consumers at once can replace vast rooms full of customer service representatives.

“Why base call-centers overseas where people with accents speak robotically from scripts when you can have an American made bot tirelessly deliver the perfect sales pitch, at a fraction of the cost?” he asked.

Ouch.

Connecting With Customers via Chatbots

Anyway, Facebook rolled out Messenger Platform (Beta) with bots at its developer conference in April. Facebook deploys its bots to provide Messenger users with automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates in addition to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications and live automated messages.

Miami Beach-based Bang Holdings is the parent of Bang Digital Media, a cannabis-focused digital media company that calls itself the “hub for all ‘cannabusiness’ ‘cannabusiness’ related advertising, content creation, technology and marketing,” and Bang Vapor, an e-juice company that can crossover to the cannabis market.

For some reason it also has an interest in chatbots, which it described as an innovative way for brands to connect with consumers. And now that it has proof of concept for what it calls a “Digital Social Influencer,” the company is apparently ready to bring its new technology to its core cannabis marketing business.

2016 is weird.