Companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook see a big future with artificial intelligence. Specifically, people having conversations with bots in messaging apps, or just having conversations with bots in general. Amazon has its Echo product, which lets users talk to Alexa and do a wide variety of things. Apple has Siri, Microsoft with Cortana, and Google has had its Now service for quite awhile, but it’s getting even better with the new Assistant.

Facebook went out of its way to introduce bots into Facebook Messenger not too long ago, which effectively lets users of the huge social network talk to brands, like flower dealers, or whatever else, and get things done. If you want to order flowers you can just talk to a bot, instead of traversing a website.

This is the future, apparently.

There’s been plenty of talk about Apple in that space, and whether or not the Cupertino-based company has any chance at combating the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and all of the others that have been working towards this future for a long time. Yes, Apple does have Siri, but Apple’s strategy with the digital personal assistant has been quite a bit different from what Google and the others are doing.

Apple’s supposedly working on that, planning on opening up Siri and her functionality, but I’m not here to talk about that. Instead, I want to actually focus on where those services are being placed. As mentioned earlier, Facebook put its bots in one of the most easily accessible places: Messenger. And when Google launches Allo later this year, its brand new messaging app, Assistant will be baked in. Always listening, ready to help.

Messaging apps are huge. There are several out there that offer a variety of features, like GIF support, no messaging limit (not that that’s a big deal these days), and so much more. Encryption is there, too. They are used by millions of people all over the globe, and just getting bigger — and more numerous.

I use Apple’s messaging platform, iMessage, and it’s one of the reasons why I won’t leave iOS/OS X anytime soon. It gives me the ability to send iMessage to the majority of people I talk to every day that have iPhones or Macs, and it also lets me send traditional text messages to everyone that doesn’t fit in that particular category.

But I also use other messaging platforms. Facebook’s Messenger. Slack. Telegram. And that’s just a few. They all have their place, and each of them lets me talk to individuals that aren’t on other platforms. The reason I do this is because I’m not the type of person that goes out of his way to tell folks what they should download, so if they are already using, say, Facebook Messenger, I’m not going to tell them to go download Telegram, just because it would mean I’d get to use one less app.

I’m a pretty straightforward person when it comes to communication, so all of the extra “benefits,” like GIF support, or stickers, or even emoji, don’t really speak to me. I just want a way to send messages, some photos and videos, and that’s about it. If someone wants to use a specific messaging platform, I’ll probably use it to as long as it lets me do those things without much hassle.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about bots being interjected into some of these things, but if this is indeed the future, well, it will be interesting to see where it goes.

Still, I’m curious to know how many messaging apps you might have on your devices. Are you the type of person that goes out of your way to download and try them all, and maybe even keep using more than, say, five? Ten? Or have you not jumped on the messaging app bandwagon just yet? Let me know!