Quora Launches Monetization for Creators of AI-Powered Bots

Quora launched a monetization program for bot creators who use its artificial intelligence (AI) product called Poe.

The program will support both prompt bots created directly on Poe and server bots created by developers who integrate with the Poe application programming interface (API), Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo said in a Wednesday (Oct. 25) blog post.

“This is a major step forward for the platform, and we are very excited to see what it lets everyone create,” D’Angelo said in the post.

Poe, which was launched in February, is an AI product that provides instant answers to questions and allows people to have conversations with several AI-powered bots, D’Angelo said in an earlier blog post.

The product enables developers to create bots and allows users to discover and chat with a variety of bots, according to the Wednesday post.

Now, with the new creator monetization program, bot creators can generate revenue, the post said. Bot creators can get a share of the revenue paid by new subscribers to Poe if their bot caused that subscription.

In the future, bot creators will be able to be paid a per-message fee that they set, per the post. Quora is setting up a system to manage this and plans to add other components to the monetization structure as well, according to the blog post.

The program is now available to U.S. residents, the post said. It will be extended to other countries soon.

“With this step today, we hope Poe enables a thriving economy with a wide diversity of AI products,” D’Angelo said in the post. “We expect all kinds of bots to do well, across areas like tutoring, knowledge, therapy, entertainment, assistants, analysis, storytelling, roleplay, and image, video, music and other media generation. Since this is the beginning of a new market, there are lots of opportunities to provide a valuable service for the world and make money at the same time.”

One company using chatbots is pet food company Freshpet, which uses the technology to enhance its customer service experience.

“My primary focus has consistently centered around meeting our pet parents in the channels they prefer, rather than compelling them to use our predetermined channels,” Freshpet Director of Consumer Care Lisa Diehl told PYMNTS in an interview posted Oct. 16.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.