A chatbot (also known as a spy, conversational bot, chatterbot, interactive agent, conversational interface, Conversational AI, talkbot or artificial spy entity) is a computer program or an artificial intelligence which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods.[1] Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing test. Chatbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler ones scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.
In 1950, Alan Turing's famous article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" was published,[7] which 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, sufficiently well that the judge is unable to distinguish reliably—on the basis of the conversational content alone—between the program and a real human. The notoriety of Turing's proposed test stimulated great interest in Joseph Weizenbaum's program ELIZA, published in 1966, which seemed to be able to fool users into believing that they were conversing with a real human. However Weizenbaum himself did not claim that ELIZA was genuinely intelligent, and the introduction to his paper presented it more as a debunking exercise:
Malicious chatbots are frequently used to fill chat rooms with spam and advertisements, by mimicking human behavior and conversations or to entice people into revealing personal information, such as bank account numbers. They are commonly found on Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and other instant messaging protocols. There has also been a published report of a chatbot used in a fake personal ad on a dating service's website.[55]
Chatbots – also known as “conversational agents” – are software applications that mimic written or spoken human speech for the purposes of simulating a conversation or interaction with a real person. There are two primary ways chatbots are offered to visitors: via web-based applications or standalone apps. Today, chatbots are used most commonly in the customer service space, assuming roles traditionally performed by living, breathing human beings such as Tier-1 support operatives and customer satisfaction reps.
Several studies accomplished by analytics agencies such as Juniper or Gartner [34] report significant reduction of cost of customer services, leading to billions of dollars of economy in the next 10 years. Gartner predicts an integration by 2020 of chatbots in at least 85% of all client's applications to customer service. Juniper's study announces an impressive amount of $8 billion retained annually by 2022 due to the use of chatbots.
The Evie chatbot has had a huge impact on social media over the last few years. She is probably the most popular artificial personality on YouTube. She has appeared in several videos by PewdiePie, the most subscribed YouTuber in the world. This includes a flirting video with over 12 million views! Evie has been filmed speaking many different languages. She chats with Squeezie in French, El Rubius and El Rincón De Giorgio in Spanish, GermanLetsPlay and ConCrafter in German, NDNG - Enes Batur in Turkish, Stuu Games in Polish and jacksepticeye, ComedyShortsGamer and KSIOlajidebtHD in English. And that is a very small selection. Evie shares her database with Cleverbot, which is an internet star in its own right. Cleverbot conversations have long been shared on Twitter, Facebook, websites, forums and bulletin boards. We are currently working to give Evie some more artificial companions, such as the male avatar Boibot.

“There is hope that consumers will be keen on experimenting with bots to make things happen for them. It used to be like that in the mobile app world 4+ years ago. When somebody told you back then… ‘I have built an app for X’… You most likely would give it a try. Now, nobody does this. It is probably too late to build an app company as an indie developer. But with bots… consumers’ attention spans are hopefully going to be wide open/receptive again!” — Niko Bonatsos, Managing Director at General Catalyst

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