It seems that “bots” are everywhere and doing everything. They are helping people buy a winter coat, to telling us the weather on our smart speakers… and to spreading false information on social media. But investors are fearing a chatbot backlash just when it looks like chatbots are something everyone is trying. It turns out that you aren’t buying any more coats and that when you talk to you speaker almost everything it said was written by hand by a person. We dive into chatbots and separate the hype from the reality and break down the limitations of what can be done with modern methods. We’ll then discuss a path to a more scalable and versatile “bot” in cognitive modeling and digital character design.