Talking to Ginny, the Pilot´s new Facebook messenger bot 

It is always encouraging to see media developing new tools, and one of the more clever innovations we saw this year was Ginny, a Facebook messenger bot developed at the Virginia Pilot. 

Why you ask? And do you need one?  Like most AI bots, for a limited staff to save time.  She fields customer service complaints from the Facebook page, and signs up readers for sports and weather text alerts. The Pilot  plans to monetize the bot offering the technology to other media. 

When I logged on to test it out, she even reminds me, “Remember I´m a (emoji image of a bot) so I may occasionally need a little help and some patience."

So I lie.  

I tell her that my newspaper was wet this morning.

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