What is a chatbot?
A chatbot
is an artificial intelligence based computer program that simulates human
conversations via auditory or textual methods. Chatbots are also known as chat
robot, chatterbot, talk bot etc.
The term ‘Chatter
Bot’ was coined by Michael Mauldin in 1994, who is actually the creator of the
first Verbot.
They are
typically used for various practical purposes such as customer service,
marketing systems or information acquisition. Chatbots are widely used in
communication, design, developer tools, education, entertainment, news,
personal, productivity, shopping, sports, health, marketing, food, tarvel,
utilities and finances.
Mostly all
websites and social media platforms are using chatbots for easy and efficient
customer communication.
1 ELIZA- 1966
2 PARRY- 1972
Want to test the Jabberwack? Click here.
4 Dr. Sbaitso- 1992
To know more click here.
5 A.L.I.C.E.- 1995
Here you can know more about it.
6 SmarterChild- 2000
1 Cortana-2015
1.
Tay-2016
History of Chatbots
The idea of
chatbots first came indirectly during the Turing Test in 1950. The
Turing Test, developed by Alan Turing, is actually a test of a machine’s
ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable
from, that of human. But they are far short of being able to pass the Turing Test.
1 ELIZA- 1966
But officially the first chatbot was developed in the 1966 by Joseph
Weizenbaum, a MIT professor. It was called ELIZA. It was created in the MIT AI
laboratory, and its work was to conduct
human conversations by matching user inputs to scripted responses. It uses a
script that simulated a psychotherapist.
One of the biggest drawback of this was, it had no built-in frameworks but it
just gave an understanding, what actually chatbots are.
There was a huge upliftment in the computer industry, as it created a
technology that can interact with humans. Many experts started declaring
chatbots would be indistinguishable from human intellect within the coming few
years. But Weizembaum just considered it as a tool or the extension of human
mind. However ELIZA was a huge success.
To know more click here.
![]() |
Eliza Chatbot |
2 PARRY- 1972
Next in 1972 an American psychiatrist Kenneth Colby constructed a
chatbot PARRY, based on paranoid schizophrenic behavior. It embedded a
conversational strategy and was much more serious than ELIZA. PARRY works via
complicated system of assumptions. It was used to interact with the mentally
dis-balanced people. In the 1970s Kenneth was only psychiatrist to work on
chatbots and he giva a message how computer
could contribute to the medical science.
Click here to know more.
![]() |
Parry Chatbot |
JABBERWACKY- 1988
In 1988 a British programmer Rollo Carpenter created a technically
improved chatbot, named as JABBERWACKY. It was designed to mimic human interaction and to carry out
conversations with users. It was designed to carry out any other functions. It was also used for advanced
technical research through its website. Later in 1997, they launched Cleverbot,
an evolved version of JABBERWACKY. It is more fuzzy and with deeper context.
![]() |
Jabberwacky chatbot |
4 Dr. Sbaitso- 1992
Dr. Sbaitso was designed in 1992 by Creative Labs for
MS-Dos. It assumed the role of a psychologist when interacting with
humans and it was used to showcase digitized voice. But it cannot conduct any
complicated conversations other than psychological questions.
![]() |
Dr. Sbaisto Chatbot |
5 A.L.I.C.E.- 1995
A.L.I.C.E. stands for Artificial Linguistic Internet
Computer Entity is a natural language processing bot which uses Heuristic
pattern matching to carry out conversations. It was the first to run on
computer by the name Alice and hence it was called Alicebot formerly. It can be
accessed using internet in their web-page. It won the Loebner Prize in September
2004 beating Jabberwacky.
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A.L.I.C.E. Chatbot |
6 SmarterChild- 2000
SmarterChild can be best described as the precursor of
Apple’s Siri and Smasung’s Voice. It was an intelligent chatbot that covers SMS
networks, buddy lists of AOL and MSN messenger users.
It was founded in 2000 by Robert Hoffer, Timothy Kay
and Peter Levitan. The idea for
instant messaging bots came from the team's vision to add natural language
comprehension functionality to the increasingly popular instant messaging and
SMS platforms.
The rapid success of SmarterChild led to targeted marketing-oriented
bots for Radiohead, Austin
Powers, Intel, Keebler, The Sporting News and others.
Powers, Intel, Keebler, The Sporting News and others.
![]() |
SmarterChild Chatbot |
7 IBM Watson-2006
IBM Watson is a general question-answering computer system posed in
natural language processing. It was developed by IBM’s project research team
led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. It was named after IBM’s founder
Thomas J. Watson.
I was originally designed to compete on the TV show ‘Jeopardy!’, in
which it beat two of the shows former champions.
We can develop bots for our websites using the IBM Watson framework,
buts that’s we will learn on another blog.
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IBM Watson |
8 Siri-2010
Siri is the virtual assistant of Apple which was developed in 2010 and is
widely used in iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS operating systems. This is
one of the most famous chatbot in recent times. It actually work like a
messenger, either by voice or texting.
9 Google Now-2012
Google Now was launched in 2012 by the Google Inch company. It is a
virtual assistant capable of answering questions, performing tasks and was
developed for Google Search app. It is mostly known as Google Assistant, and
now it is considered to be one of the smartest chatbot. Google Now has
knowledge about everything and can answer any type of questions. It can also be
accessed using both voice and texts. This is now even integrated in the smart
home device of Google, Google Home.
It has a beautiful VUI (Voice-User-Inteface), probably the best and has
unique features that other chatbots are lacking. It is still giving a tough
competition to Siri, Cortana and Alexa.
1 Alexa- 2015
Alexa is an intelligent virtual assistant of Amazon
that was founded in 2015, which inhabits the Amazon Echo device. It also uses
Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand user prompts. Amazon recently launched
Amazon Echo Show that not only gives answer to certain questions but also has a
display output. That is it has both VUI (Voice User Interface) and GUI
(Graphical User Inteface).
![]() |
Amazon Alexa |
1 Cortana-2015
Microsoft wasn’t far to have its first chatbot or
virtual assistant, hence they developed their virtual assistant Cortana in the
middle of 2015. It is also quite similar to Alexa, Siri or Google Now. But
according to me it is not as smart as them. There are still more to improve in
Cortana. But they are capable of answering questions and performing tasks.
![]() |
Microsoft Cortana |
1.
Tay-2016
In 2016, Microsoft made a new chatbot to mimic the
speech, behavior and habits of a teenage girl. But unfortunately it had to
shut down just 16 hours after launch as it began to post offensive tweets and
increasingly became paranoid.
Later many chatbots were developed in the early 2017 for different
social networking sites like, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp etc..
![]() |
Chatbot History |
Why we need Chatbots?
You probably wondering about, why we need chatbots?
They are just simple text-based services what’s the use of them? Right?
Well I can help you in that respect. Chatbots are one of the most
emerging technology. This is because having a chatbot lessens your
work and time. Previously when there was no chatbots, companies used to appoint people for answering general FAQs to the
customer. But having chatbots they can answer them automatically, hence it
saves time, money and effort. Moreover it is available 24x7, all time. Hence people
can access them anywhere anytime. I think this is one of the biggest advantage
of having the chatbot.
Well we can develop our own chatbots for our websites,
facebook messenger, WhatsApp etc.. For that you have to wait for the next
blogs.
To know how can we develop our own chatbots, click here.
To know how can we develop our own chatbots, click here.
Thank You for reading this. Hope this helped you a
lot.
See you on next blog.😊😊