Fake phone numbers are a beautiful thing, whether you make them up on the spot or give out the number to a service like the Rejection Hotline. Best of all, though, are the ones you craft yourself, like the one I gave to car dealers that fakes a full voicemail message.

A recent survey of 5000 respondents, including 100 businesses and 500 consumers from A/NZ, has found there's a wide disconnect between what we expect from customer service and what businesses deliver. Businesses greatly over-estimate their performance and customers still prefer traditional shopping channels although their service expectations aren't being consistently met.

Whether you'd like to get into the Stranger Things spirit without sacrificing your apartment security deposit, or you just miss shooting the breeze with SmarterChild (RIP AIM), there's a chatbot for that.

At some point, we've all been contacted by a Nigerian prince, long-lost uncle, or some guy that just can't manage to get a bank account with the promise that if we just make one small wire transfer we'll have millions in our account by morning.

Messaging services such as Slack and Facebook Messenger are just a few places you can play with bots, programs that provide a service within an app or platform. With Botlist, you can find a bot to fit your needs for a variety of services, including bots that will shave some seconds off your commute, help you convert files, and keep you on your diet by helping you document your dishes.

Zo is the spiritual successor to Microsoft Tay - the artificially intelligent chatbot that famously went into a racist, sexist meltdown in 2016. Zo was built with more sophisticated AI software than its predecessor, which translates to more fluid conversations and less maniacal hate speech. However, it turns out Zo really didn't care for the Life Is Strange video game series - and she doesn't care who knows it.

I'm very bad at processing my feelings alone. If I don't want to spiral into anxiety, I need to process with a conversation partner: my wife, my friends, my therapist. But what do I do with all the passing feelings that aren't worth draining someone else's time? I'm excited to try offloading this emotional labour to Woebot, a new chatbot therapist built by Stanford psychologists and AI developers.