Next Insurance bot available on Facebook for personal trainers

California-based Next Insurance becomes the first to offer a chatbot to enable personal trainers to quote and purchase insurance via Facebook Messenger. According to Guy Goldstein, cofounder and CEO of Next, 70% of its customers are buying insurance on their phones and so the chatbot “brings simplicity, transparency and easy access.” Recall: Next is a one-year-old digital commercial broker with $13 million in funding since inception. The technology provider in this case is SmallTalk, a Palo Alto-based chatbot developer. Bottom Line: try here.

Speaking of bots, Oscar chatbot is on a break.

Speaking of bots (take 2), Kevin Durant is a proud investor of a new app called Hugging Face that lets you make digital friends. Got to wonder when a shift will occur from having commercially-branded bots to your very own bot? Perhaps one that can fetch insurance quotes while miraculously avoiding spam (read: The Zebra, they will spam you). Still thinking? Think no more, because the bots are coming, my human friends.