chatbot

chatbot, computer program designed to have interactive or automated conversation with humans. Rudimentary chatbots were first developed in the mid-to-late 20th century and became more technically sound and widely available in the late 2010s and early 2020s, especially as artificial intelligence (AI) gained prominence in the technology sphere.

The first chatbots

The idea for the technology that preceded chatbot programs was first conceptualized by British mathematician and logician Alan Turing. In 1950 Turing proposed a set of criteria to determine whether a computer was sentient. The premise of the test was that a remote human interrogator, within a fixed time frame, must distinguish between a computer and a human subject based on their replies to various questions posed by the interrogator. Turing suggested that the computer’s sentience could be measured by whether or how often the human interrogator misidentified the computer as human. This theoretical test of AI became known as the Turing test.

The first software program to be recognized as a chatbot was developed in 1966 by computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum. The program, named Eliza, was capable of simulating conversation with a computer user. By using an electric typewriter connected to a mainframe, a user could type in a conversational phrase, which Eliza would then review using a pattern-recognition algorithm. The algorithm compared the user’s input against a set of rules, which would generate appropriate sentences as typewritten responses. While this was considered a historic development in the field of computer science, Eliza’s abilities were too limited to pass the Turing test, as Eliza sometimes produced incoherent responses.

A.L.I.C.E. and Jabberwacky

In 1995 a chatbot known as A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) was released by developer Richard Wallace. In creating A.L.I.C.E., Wallace improved upon the AI used by Eliza after monitoring its conversations. After A.L.I.C.E. was presented with a sentence or phrase that it could not recognize, Wallace would add a response for the chatbot to use in the future rather than letting it repeatedly produce an incorrect response; this allowed for greater flexibility. As A.L.I.C.E. became more popular, other software designers could add their own responses to the chatbot’s spin-off software. Thus, the bot was capable of answering even more varied inquiries.

The chatbot Jabberwacky was released by computer scientist Rollo Carpenter in 1997 after he had spent more than a decade on its development. When it first launched, Jabberwacky used a similar rule-based approach to response generation as older chatbots like Eliza. Jabberwacky has been the subject of continuous development since it first debuted, and in 2008 the program was renamed Cleverbot. Cleverbot is notable for having the ability to save human responses to questions, which, unlike A.L.I.C.E., allows it to learn without intervention from a developer.

Later developments

Chatbot technology continued to proliferate in the 2000s and 2010s. In 2001 the development team at AI startup ActiveBuddy released the chatbot SmarterChild for use on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). AIM was a popular chat room and instant messaging app, and its users could add SmarterChild to their friends list and converse with it. ActiveBuddy released its second chatbot, named GooglyMinotaur, through AIM as well. Created in collaboration with the rock band Radiohead, GooglyMinotaur was meant to be an unconventional promotional tool, as it was released alongside the band’s 2001 album Amnesiac. AIM users could interact with GooglyMinotaur by chatting with it and could even play games such as hangman with the bot.

In 2011 Apple released its virtual voice assistant program, Siri, on the iPhone 4S. Siri is a built-in chatbot that accepts voice commands from users to perform simple tasks. In 2014 Amazon followed suit by releasing its own virtual voice assistant program, named Alexa, on its Amazon Echo devices. Neither of these chatbots were developed with the goal of creating convincing conversations with users. Rather, the virtual assistants were designed to follow voice commands to perform simple tasks such as searching for information online, setting alarms, sending text messages, playing music, and adding events to calendars. Both virtual assistants proved to be immensely popular and brought chatbot technology into mainstream use.

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In 2022 OpenAI introduced the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT. ChatGPT is based on a natural language processing model that uses probability to predict words or sentences that its user is expecting. This allows ChatGPT to respond to users in a way that is sometimes indistinguishable from human communication. ChatGPT is capable of writing articles, responses to emails, and even computer code. While the widespread adoption of ChatGPT has proven useful in some sectors, the chatbot does have a reputation for responding in ways that are biased toward the expectations of the user. This leads ChatGPT to occasionally respond with false or misleading data (termed hallucinations) or to potentially even plagiarize information.