A chatbot is a software application or web interface that is designed to mimic human conversation through text or voice interactions. [1] [2] [3] 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, but simpler chatbots have existed for decades.
This list of chatbots is a general overview of notable chatbot applications and web interfaces.
Chatbot | Developer | Released | Discontinued | Platform | Technology | License | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Albert One | Robby Garner | 1995 | ? | The Internet | Based on a multi-faceted approach in natural-language programming | ? | 1998 and 1999 Loebner Prize winner designed to mimic the way humans make conversations |
Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity | Richard Wallace | 1995-11-23 [35] | 2013-10-15 | ? | AIML | Open-source software [36] | Three-time Loebner Prize winner |
Assistant | Speaktoit | 2011-03-01 | 2016-12-15 | Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows 10, ChromeOS | ? | ? | A virtual assistant acquired by Google, unrelated to the Google Assistant |
Charlix | ? | 2006-04-17 | 2010-03-03 [37] [ non-primary source needed ] | Linux | Based on Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity | Open-source software | Desktop virtual assistant |
Cortana | Microsoft | 2014-04-02 | 2023-08-11 | Windows, Windows Phone, iOS, Android, Xbox OS | Tellme Networks, Satori, Microsoft Eva | Proprietary | A deprecated virtual assistant succeeded by Copilot; originally named after character in Xbox Halo video game |
Dr. Sbaitso | Creative Labs | 1991-06 or earlier [38] | ? | MS-DOS | Speech synthesis | ? | Initially released in Singapore |
ELIZA | Joseph Weizenbaum [39] [40] | 1964 | 1967 (stopped development) [41] | ? | Pattern matching, MAD-SLIP, lisp-like representation [42] | ? | Developed at MIT |
Eugene Goostman | Vladimir Veselov, Eugene Demchenko, Sergey Ulasen [43] [44] | 2001 | 2014-06-07 | ? | ? | ? | 2012 Turing 100 and 2014 Royal Society Turing test winner some regard as having passed the Turing test |
Evi | True Knowledge | 2012-10 | 2014-01-23 | iOS, Android | ? | ? | Virtual assistant |
Fred | Robby Garner | 1997-12-01 or earlier [45] | ? | ? | ? | ? | |
GooglyMinotaur | ActiveBuddy (under contract by Capitol Records) | 2001-06 | 2002-03-24 | AIM | ? | ? | ActiveBuddy's first offering, [46] [47] specializing in Radiohead-related information [48] |
Infobot | Kevin Lenzo | 1995-06 | ? | IRC | Perl, factoids | Artistic License | An IRC bot primarily designed to assist with answering FAQs in channels such as #perl [49] |
Jeeney AI | C.J. Jones | 2007-02 [50] | 2010 | ? | ? | ? | 2009 Chatterbox Challenge winner [51] |
Mark V Shaney | Rob Pike, Bruce Ellis, Don P. Mitchell | 1981 | ? | Usenet | Markov chain techniques | ? | A synthetic user whose postings in the net.singles newsgroups were generated based on text from other postings |
Mycroft | Mycroft team | 2015-11-17 | 2023-01-31 | Linux | ? | Apache License [52] | Virtual assistant |
PARRY | Kenneth Colby | 1972 | ? | ? | ? | ? | An early example of a chatbot |
Racter | Mindscape (publisher) | 1984 | ? | IBM PC compatibles, Apple II, Mac, Amiga | ? | ? | Was able to generate English-language prose at random [53] |
SmarterChild | ActiveBuddy | 2001-06 | 2006-10-12 | AIM, Windows Live Messenger | ? | ? | The second bot released by ActiveBuddy [54] |
Sparrow | Google DeepMind | 2022-09 | 2023-01-12 | Web app | Chinchilla | Proprietary | |
Tay | Microsoft | 2016-03-23 | 2016-03-24 | ? | ? | Rapidly decayed into producing racist bigotry after manipulation by online trolls (from 4chan and 8chan); suspended after 16 hours [55] [56] | |
Verbot | Avaya | 1997 | 2012 (early in the year) | Microsoft Windows, web app | ? | ? | An artificial intelligence software development kit [57] |
Viv | Viv Labs, Inc. (subsidiary of Samsung Electronics) | 2016-05-09 | 2017-10-18 | iOS, Android | Integrated into Bixby 2.0 | ? | Virtual assistant |
ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program developed from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party. Whereas the ELIZA program itself was written (originally) in MAD-SLIP, the pattern matching directives that contained most of its language capability were provided in separate "scripts", represented in a lisp-like representation. The most famous script, DOCTOR, simulated a psychotherapist of the Rogerian school, and used rules, dictated in the script, to respond with non-directional questions to user inputs. As such, ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots and one of the first programs capable of attempting the Turing test.
In computer science, the ELIZA effect is a tendency to project human traits — such as experience, semantic comprehension or empathy — onto rudimentary computer programs having a textual interface. ELIZA was a symbolic AI chatbot developed in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum and imitating a psychotherapist. Many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite its basic text-processing approach and the explanations of its limitations.
Joseph Weizenbaum was a German American computer scientist and a professor at MIT. The Weizenbaum Award and the Weizenbaum Institute are named after him.
A chatbot is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. 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, but simpler chatbots have existed for decades.
A voice-user interface (VUI) enables spoken human interaction with computers, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and answer questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device is a device controlled with a voice user interface.
A.L.I.C.E., also referred to as Alicebot, or simply Alice, is a natural language processing chatterbot—a program that engages in a conversation with a human by applying some heuristical pattern matching rules to the human's input. It was inspired by Joseph Weizenbaum's classical ELIZA program.
A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to simulate human conversation, such as via online chat, to facilitate interaction with their users. The interaction may be via text, graphical interface, or voice - as some virtual assistants are able to interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices.
The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1949, is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation was a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel, such as a computer keyboard and screen, so the result would not depend on the machine's ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator could not reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test. The test results would not depend on the machine's ability to give correct answers to questions, only on how closely its answers resembled those a human would give. Since the Turing test is a test of indistinguishability in performance capacity, the verbal version generalizes naturally to all of human performance capacity, verbal as well as nonverbal (robotic).
Cleverbot is a chatterbot web application. It was created by British AI scientist Rollo Carpenter and launched in October 2008. It was preceded by Jabberwacky, a chatbot project that began in 1988 and went online in 1997. In its first decade, Cleverbot held several thousand conversations with Carpenter and his associates. Since launching on the web, the number of conversations held has exceeded 150 million. Besides the web application, Cleverbot is also available as an iOS, Android, and Windows Phone app.
Cortana was a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for users.
Braina is a virtual assistant and speech-to-text dictation application for Microsoft Windows developed by Brainasoft. Braina uses natural language interface, speech synthesis, and speech recognition technology to interact with its users and allows them to use natural language sentences to perform various tasks on a computer. The name Braina is a short form of "Brain Artificial".
Tay was a chatbot that was originally released by Microsoft Corporation as a Twitter bot on March 23, 2016. It caused subsequent controversy when the bot began to post inflammatory and offensive tweets through its Twitter account, causing Microsoft to shut down the service only 16 hours after its launch. According to Microsoft, this was caused by trolls who "attacked" the service as the bot made replies based on its interactions with people on Twitter. It was replaced with Zo.
Alice is a Russian intelligent personal assistant for Android, iOS and Windows operating systems and Yandex's own devices developed by Yandex. Alice was officially introduced on 10 October 2017. Aside from common tasks, such as internet search or weather forecasts, it can also run applications and chit-chat. Alice is also the virtual assistant used for the Yandex Station smart speaker.
Haptik is an Indian enterprise conversational AI platform founded in August 2013, and acquired by Reliance Industries Limited in 2019. The company develops technology to enable enterprises to build conversational AI systems that allow users to converse with applications and electronic devices in free-format, natural language, using speech or text. The company has been accorded numerous accolades including the Frost & Sullivan Award, NASSCOM's Al Game Changer Award, and serves Fortune 500 brands globally in industries such as financial, insurance, healthcare, technology and communications.
Xiao-i is a Chinese cognitive artificial intelligence enterprise founded in 2001.
Celia is an artificially intelligent virtual assistant developed by Huawei for their latest HarmonyOS and Android-based EMUI smartphones that lack Google Services and a Google Assistant. The assistant can perform day-to-day tasks, which include making a phone call, setting a reminder and checking the weather. It was unveiled on 7 April 2020 and got publicly released on 27 April 2020 via an OTA update solely to selected devices that can update their software to EMUI 10.1.
LaMDA is a family of conversational large language models developed by Google. Originally developed and introduced as Meena in 2020, the first-generation LaMDA was announced during the 2021 Google I/O keynote, while the second generation was announced the following year.
Yellow.ai, formerly Yellow Messenger, is a multinational company headquartered in San Mateo, California focused on customer service automation. It was founded in 2016 and provides an AI platform for automating customer support experiences across chat and voice. The platform supports more than 135 languages across more than 35 channels.
Artificial intelligence rhetoric is a term primarily applied to persuasive text and speech generated by chatbots using generative artificial intelligence, although the term can also apply to the language that humans type or speak when communicating with a chatbot. This emerging field of rhetoric scholarship is related to the fields of digital rhetoric and human-computer interaction.
The internet teaches Microsoft a lesson in the dangers of artificial intelligence and public interaction... Microsoft's millennial-talking AI chatbot, Tay.ai, has taken a break from Twitter after humans taught it to parrot a number of inflammatory and racist opinions... Microsoft had launched Tay on Wednesday, aiming it at people aged between 18 and 24 years in the US. But after 16 busy hours of talking on subjects ranging from Hitler to 9/11 conspiracies, Tay has gone quiet.
Tay lived for just 16 hours, until Microsoft "became aware of a coordinated effort by some users to abuse Tay's commenting skills" to make her a Nazi. The /pol/ boards on 4chan and 8chan—/pol/ stands for "politically incorrect"—are where that coordination took place.