I think it's important to acknowledge the distinction between chatting to a bot and not being convinced that it's a human, and having two conversations simultaneously, one of which is with a human, one with a computer, and figuring out which is which. Humans too can be surprisingly obtuse, go off at tangents, ignore your points, be boring and repeat themselves.
As for the questions around the utility - automating support functions for various non-critical services seems like an obvious potential application (think of all those "click here to chat to a live representative" dialogs on various websites).
As for the questions around the utility - automating support functions for various non-critical services seems like an obvious potential application (think of all those "click here to chat to a live representative" dialogs on various websites).