Bureaucracy is, for many people, the closest thing to living an awake nightmare. Cumbersome procedures, endless lines and queries without answers are situations that more than one person has had to go through, at least in their adult life.Technology, like a giant Swiss army knife, usually has a solution for every need. Artificial intelligence has the potential to profoundly modify an infinity of administrative processes and chatbots are the most palpable face of this rising phenomenon.Banks, retail chains and eCommerce platforms, among many others, have already joined this trend. Even at the governmental level, solutions of this caliber gain space thanks to their practicality and immediacy.A close example is the one of the City of Buenos Aires, that for a few years has Boti, its bot of queries that was born in its web portals and that now reaches Whatsapp, with which, they hope, it explodes in popularity.The service, available at number 1150500147, establishes a dialog window with local residents to provide advice on different types of consultations. For greater security, the profile has a green tilde that guarantees that it is a certified account.The location of the new ecobicis stations or VTV points, cultural events in the Federal Capital, crime maps, school registrations and green dot addresses are just some of the questions that can be asked from February 21 through the cell phone , just a chat away.The operation is simple: the citizen greets and the system responds with a list of frequently asked questions. In addition, it gives the option to perform more specific searches, in case the conversation requires itIn dialogue with iProUP, Felipe Miguel, chief of staff of the City of Buenos Aires, explains the reasons why it was decided to disembark in the messaging app."Definitely, WhatsApp is one of the most used communication channels, in Federal Capital it is even number one," he says, adding: "The way of chatting through this tool is very friendly, so that all the neighbors can chat with the City as they chat with friends and family makes it very simple and accessible. "Boti is a fundamental channel of attention for the government of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, since it is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In any case, they clarify that it does not replace the existing communication channels, but that it is added as another tool to approach porteños on a daily basis.The "WhatsApp" project took more than half a year of development and involved all areas of Buenos Aires government.The challenge, they say, was to transform the contents that citizens already consult through different routes that the city offers, in a conversation aimed at exchanging text.According to Miguel, the commitment to the chatbot is serious: "The idea is to become the main channel of contact between the neighbor and the city, the first instance for everything they need."For its development, the project took references from each of the government areas to collect and process information, centralize it and then dump it into the artificial intelligence platform that feeds the bot.Strictly speaking, a team of editors works so that the content is transformed into "conversational" material; that is, something that can be read from WhatsApp, since it is not the same to prepare content for a website as for a chat.Likewise, for the human attention provided within the platform, they have telephone line operators 147, AGIP, and traffic controllers to solve infractions through the smartphone.From the government they argue that this way a comprehensive content strategy is generated, across all areas."Boti stands out for adding information on many issues, procedures and even having the possibility to solve different problems, in that sense, it is constantly evolving", underlines the Buenos Aires chief of staff.Of course, it is a dynamic platform, so the Government already thinks about the next steps. Miguel points out that "it is going to add more information, provide more content, consultations and services, the neighbors will be able to dictate their own needs and the chatbot will enrich them".The amount of doubts that Boti can receive is wide. However, the software has a lot to learn. According to the head of the Cabinet, when he can not answer a question, "he can ask for clarifications, and at the third consultation, if he does not understand, he offers the possibility of sending the neighbor back to 147 to be seen by an operator."It should be noted that the range of conversations is extremely broad. The system has its seasonal periods of questions, such as school registration, the search for city events, the renewal of the license or the VTV procedure.Also, others are valid throughout the year, such as information on shifts and procedures, the payment of infractions, or the dates of neighborhood meetings, among others.Boti experience, in its different implementations, has been several years. The official assures that the feedback has been very positive, but they had not achieved the massiveness that, they hope, they will achieve with WhatsApp.Up to now, they managed around 200,000 conversations with citizens per month through their digital channels. With this new tool, they expect queries to multiply exponentially."We are aware of what makes life easier for neighbors, especially when it comes to accessing information and services, in this sense, the possibility of resolving procedures more quickly, knowing city events and directions, with simplicity. and in such a short time, we find it impressive ", concludes Miguel.Chatbots, a growing tendenceChatbots are the clearest example of how robotics, applied to the field of software, is redefining daily tasks inside and outside companies, becoming the official "voice" of many companies facing their users or the employees themselves.All this, through text platforms such as Skype, Slack, Whatsapp or Facebook, among others.According to the analysis firm Juniper Research, its potential is so great that the projected savings in customer services through the use of this modality will represent, globally, more than US $ 8,000 million in 2022 alone.At the same time, an Oracle research report shows that 80% of the leading companies in sales already use chatbots or will do so by 2020. In Argentina, there are other successful examples of implementations besides Boti. Banco Galicia was a pioneer among banks with the launch of Gala in 2017: at the beginning of 2018 it processed between 2,000 and 3,000 consultations per month. By December, that number was already 75,000.The bank was also the first in the country to join WhatsApp with its bot, and has even implemented it in its Facebook and Home Banking channels. Today it has 200 types of data related to products, services and information from different managements that can be done from the platform, a figure that will continue to rise.Another example is TurismoCity. The platform added to its Facebook fanpage - which has more than 700 thousand followers - to Volatina, a chatbot that already manages 1,000 weekly inquiries.By way of comparison, in its web portal, the figure is around 100 queries in the same period of time. According to the company, more than 70% of the questions are answered successfully.The use of assistants fed by machine learning even gives doors inside the companies. Since 2007, the Argentine software developer Intive-FDV has managed practically all of its internal processes with Sheena, an "ad-hoc" chatbot that manages everything from assigning tasks to the state of mind and knowledge of its employees.The software also worked as a space to test different innovations that were then applied to products for their clients: today, Sheena's DNA can be seen in the chatbot made for the European bank Tandem Bank and in a similar solution commissioned by Virgin Train, that you can even trade with Amazon's Alexa.Thus, "Anything, I write to you" stopped being an excuse for the era of social networks, to become the future of consultations. Today, the solution to a problem can be found in a dialog window.