Kip is a chatbot that simplifies group purchases -- it can poll your co-workers about who needs more office supplies, or whether to order dark-roast or light-roast coffee for the kitchen. But Kip has another simplification feature that caught my eye: The chatbot gamifies ecommerce with emojis.
“People can combine emojis together to buy new things. So you can be like, cat + bus = cat bus, or you can do chicken + ramen and it gives you chicken ramen,” said Kip cofounder and chief technical officer Alyx Baldwin. Catbus is a beloved character in Hayao Miyazaki's animated film, My Neighbor Totoro.
Results can be accurate: An American flag gets you an American flag, lipstick gets you lipstick. Or the results can be fairly random: A plain old smiley face emoji produced a book titled Grim Grinning Ghouls, a Barenaked Ladies album, and a small toy Ultron from the Avengers movie. The scream face emoji gets you the movie Scream.
