Chatbot
A chatbot is a software application or web interface that converses through text or speech. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of maintaining a conversation with a user in natural language and simulating the way a human would behave as a conversational partner. Such chatbots often use deep learning and natural language processing. Simpler chatbots have existed for decades.
Chatbots have gained popularity with the release of ChatGPT in 2022, followed by competitors such as Gemini, Claude, and Grok, in what is labelled an AI boom. AI chatbots typically use fine-tuned large language models to generate text.
A major area where chatbots have long been used is customer service and support, with various sorts of virtual assistants.
History
Turing test
In 1950, Alan Turing published an article entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" in which he proposed what is now called the Turing test as a criterion of intelligence. This criterion depends on the ability of a computer program to impersonate a human in a real-time written conversation with a human judge, to the extent that the judge is incapable of reliably distinguishing, on the basis of the conversational content alone, between the program and a real human.Early chatbots
's program ELIZA was first published in 1966. Weizenbaum did not claim that ELIZA was genuinely intelligent, and the introduction to his paper presented it more as a debunking exercise:In artificial intelligence, machines are made to behave in wondrous ways, often sufficient to dazzle even the most experienced observer. But once a particular program is unmasked, once its inner workings are explained, its magic crumbles away; it stands revealed as a mere collection of procedures. The observer says to himself "I could have written that". With that thought, he moves the program in question from the shelf marked "intelligent", to that reserved for curios. The object of this paper is to cause just such a re-evaluation of the program about to be "explained". Few programs ever needed it more.ELIZA's key method of operation involves the recognition of clue words or phrases in the input, and the output of the corresponding pre-prepared or pre-programmed responses that can move the conversation forward in an apparently meaningful way. Thus an illusion of understanding is generated, even though the processing involved has been merely superficial. ELIZA showed that such an illusion is surprisingly easy to generate because human judges are ready to give the benefit of the doubt when conversational responses are capable of being interpreted as "intelligent".
Following ELIZA, psychiatrist Kenneth Colby developed PARRY in 1972.
From 1978 to some time after 1983, the CYRUS project led by Janet Kolodner constructed a chatbot simulating Cyrus Vance. It used case-based reasoning, and updated its database daily by parsing wire news from United Press International. The program was unable to process the news items subsequent to the surprise resignation of Cyrus Vance in April 1980, and the team constructed another chatbot simulating his successor, Edmund Muskie.
In 1984, an interactive version of the program Racter was released which acted as a chatbot.
A.L.I.C.E. was released in 1995. This uses a markup language called AIML, which is specific to its function as a conversational agent, and has since been adopted by various other developers of, so-called, Alicebots. A.L.I.C.E. is a weak AI without any reasoning capabilities. It is based on a similar pattern matching technique as ELIZA in 1966. This is not strong AI, which would require sapience and logical reasoning abilities.
Jabberwacky, released in 1997, learns new responses and context based on real-time user interactions, rather than being driven from a static database.
Chatbot competitions focus on the Turing test or more specific goals. Two such annual contests are the Loebner Prize and The Chatterbox Challenge.
Pre-dating the current generation of large language models, Gavagai, a Swedish language technology startup, created a Twitter-based bot in 2015 and
DBpedia created a chatbot during the 2017 Google Summer of Code that communicated through Facebook Messenger.
Modern chatbots based on large language models
Modern chatbots like ChatGPT are often based on foundational large language models called generative pre-trained transformers. They are based on a deep learning architecture called the transformer, which contains artificial neural networks. They generate text after being trained on a large text corpus, and have emergent abilities that they are not specifically trained for.Chatbots integrated into apps and websites can call image-generation models or search the web.
Application
Messaging apps
Many companies' chatbots run on messaging apps or simply via SMS. They are used for B2C customer service, sales and marketing.In 2016, Facebook Messenger allowed developers to place chatbots on their platform. There were 30,000 bots created for Messenger in the first six months, rising to 100,000 by September 2017.
Since September 2017, this has also been as part of a pilot program on WhatsApp. Airlines KLM and Aeroméxico both announced their participation in the testing; both airlines had previously launched customer services on the Facebook Messenger platform.
The bots usually appear as one of the user's contacts, but can sometimes act as participants in a group chat.
Many banks, insurers, media companies, e-commerce companies, airlines, hotel chains, retailers, health care providers, government entities, and restaurant chains have used chatbots to answer simple questions, increase customer engagement, for promotion, and to offer additional ways to order from them. Chatbots are also used in market research to collect short survey responses.
A 2017 study showed 4% of companies used chatbots. In a 2016 study, 80% of businesses said they intended to have one by 2020.
As part of company apps and websites
Previous generations of chatbots were present on company websites, e.g. Ask Jenn from Alaska Airlines which debuted in 2008 or Expedia's virtual customer service agent which launched in 2011. The newer generation of chatbots includes IBM Watson-powered "Rocky", introduced in February 2017 by the New York City-based e-commerce company Rare Carat to provide information to prospective diamond buyers.Chatbot sequences
Used by marketers to script sequences of messages, very similar to an autoresponder sequence. Such sequences can be triggered by user opt-in or the use of keywords within user interactions. After a trigger occurs a sequence of messages is delivered until the next anticipated user response. Each user response is used in the decision tree to help the chatbot navigate the response sequences to deliver the correct response message.Company internal platforms
Companies have used chatbots for customer support, human resources, or in Internet-of-Things projects. Overstock.com, for one, has reportedly launched a chatbot named Mila to attempt to automate certain processes when customer service employees request sick leave. Other large companies such as Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Renault and Citroën are now using chatbots instead of call centres with humans to provide a first point of contact. In large companies, like in hospitals and aviation organizations, chatbots are also used to share information within organizations, and to assist and replace service desks.Customer service
Chatbots have been proposed as a replacement for customer service departments. In 2026, The Financial Times reported on agentic chatbots that could do shopping for customers once given instructions.In 2016, Russia-based Tochka Bank launched a chatbot on Facebook for a range of financial services, including a possibility of making payments. In July 2016, Barclays Africa also launched a Facebook chatbot.
Healthcare
Chatbots are also appearing in the healthcare industry. A study suggested that physicians in the United States believed that chatbots would be most beneficial for scheduling doctor appointments, locating health clinics, or providing medication information. A 2025 review found that participants often rated chatbot responses as more empathic than those from clinicians.In 2020, WhatsApp worked with the World Health Organization and the Government of India to make chatbots to answers users' questions on COVID-19.
In 2023, US-based National Eating Disorders Association replaced its human helpline staff with a chatbot but had to take it offline after users reported receiving harmful advice from it.
Politics
In New Zealand, the chatbot SAM – short for Semantic Analysis Machine – has been developed by Nick Gerritsen of Touchtech. It is designed to share its political thoughts, for example on topics such as climate change, healthcare and education, etc. It talks to people through Facebook Messenger.In 2022, the chatbot "Leader Lars" or "Leder Lars" was nominated for The Synthetic Party to run in the Danish parliamentary election, and was built by the artist collective Computer Lars. Leader Lars differed from earlier virtual politicians by leading a political party and by not pretending to be an objective candidate. This chatbot engaged in critical discussions on politics with users from around the world.
In India, the state government has launched a chatbot for its Aaple Sarkar platform, which provides conversational access to information regarding public services managed.
Toys
Chatbots have also been incorporated into devices not primarily meant for computing, such as toys.Hello Barbie is an Internet-connected version of the doll that uses a chatbot provided by the company ToyTalk, which previously used the chatbot for a range of smartphone-based characters for children. These characters' behaviors are constrained by a set of rules that in effect emulate a particular character and produce a storyline.
The My Friend Cayla doll was marketed as a line of dolls which uses speech recognition technology in conjunction with an Android or iOS mobile app to recognize the child's speech and have a conversation. Like the Hello Barbie doll, it attracted controversy due to vulnerabilities with the doll's Bluetooth stack and its use of data collected from the child's speech.
IBM's Watson computer has been used as the basis for chatbot-based educational toys for companies such as CogniToys, intended to interact with children for educational purposes.