Microsoft added a bot to its News Pro app, which will “find information on the latest developments in your industry or field – and talk about it with you”.

News Pro is a product of Microsoft’s Garage “experimental projects” unit.

Other than searching and tracking news, the bot can also “chat about news all day long”.

“A bot that can have some basic conversation with you could make news reading more fun,” said Yumao Lu, a principal development manager whose team works on Bing news products.

News Pro, which debuted in January, also gains a groups feature, to share and comment on articles with colleagues and friends with similar interest.

According to Lu, “a very natural move after reading news is to share and comment with people who have common interests. These groups are trying to fill a gap, to give you opportunity to express opinions with others”.

“This was an app that focused on news reading, and now you can chat with the app and with others, creating communities.”

The app automatically groups users based on where they work or by interests and skills, and then recommends curated content to corresponding groups.

It is worth noting that both Facebook and Telegram have news bots.

At its annual Build developer event earlier this year, Microsoft previewed its bot framework that can be used by developers to build intelligent bots that enable customers to chat using natural language

The company also released its Skype Bot Platform, including SDK, APIs and workflows, enabling developers to build bots on the Skype communication platform.