Chatbot

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A chatbot (also known as a smartbot, talkbot, chatterbot, Bot, IM bot, interactive
agent, Conversational interface or Artificial Conversational 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.

The term "ChatterBot" was originally coined by Michael Mauldin (creator of the
first Verbot, Julia) in 1994 to describe these conversational programs.[2] Today,
most chatbots are accessed via virtual assistants such as Google Assistant and
Amazon Alexa, via messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or WeChat, or via
individual organizations' apps and websites.[3][4] Chatbots can be classified into
usage categories such as conversational commerce (e-commerce via chat), analytics,
communication, customer support, design, developer tools, education, entertainment,
finance, food, games, health, HR, marketing, news, personal, productivity,
shopping, social, sports, travel and utilities.[5]
Background
In 1950, Alan Turing's famous article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" was
published,[6] 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:

[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.[7]

ELIZA's key method of operation (copied by chatbot designers ever since) involves
the recognition of cue words or phrases in the input, and the output of
corresponding pre-prepared or pre-programmed responses that can move the
conversation forward in an apparently meaningful way (e.g. by responding to any
input that contains the word 'MOTHER' with 'TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY').[8]
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 so ready to give the benefit of the
doubt when conversational responses are capable of being interpreted as
"intelligent".

Interface designers have come to appreciate that humans' readiness to interpret

computer output as genuinely conversational�even when it is actually based on
rather simple pattern-matching�can be exploited for useful purposes. Most people
prefer to engage with programs that are human-like, and this gives chatbot-style
techniques a potentially useful role in interactive systems that need to elicit
information from users, as long as that information is relatively straightforward
and falls into predictable categories. Thus, for example, online help systems can
usefully employ chatbot techniques to identify the area of help that users require,
potentially providing a "friendlier" interface than a more formal search or menu
system. This sort of usage holds the prospect of moving chatbot technology from
Weizenbaum's "shelf ... reserved for curios" to that marked "genuinely useful
computational methods".

Development
The classic historic early chatbots are ELIZA (1966) and PARRY (1972).[9][10][11]
[12] More recent notable programs include A.L.I.C.E., Jabberwacky and D.U.D.E
(Agence Nationale de la Recherche and CNRS 2006). While ELIZA and PARRY were used
exclusively to simulate typed conversation, many chatbots now include functional
features such as games and web searching abilities. In 1984, a book called The
Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed was published, allegedly written by the
chatbot Racter (though the program as released would not have been capable of doing
so).[13]

One pertinent field of AI research is natural language processing. Usually, weak AI

fields employ specialized software or programming languages created specifically
for the narrow function required. For example, A.L.I.C.E. 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.
Nevertheless, A.L.I.C.E. is still purely based on pattern matching techniques
without any reasoning capabilities, the same technique ELIZA was using back in
1966. This is not strong AI, which would require sapience and logical reasoning
abilities.

Jabberwacky learns new responses and context based on real-time user interactions,
rather than being driven from a static database. Some more recent chatbots also
combine real-time learning with evolutionary algorithms that optimise their ability
to communicate based on each conversation held. Still, there is currently no
general purpose conversational artificial intelligence, and some software
developers focus on the practical aspect, information retrieval.

Chatbot competitions focus on the Turing test or more specific goals. Two such
annual contests are the Loebner Prize and The Chatterbox Challenge (the latter has
been offline since 2015, however materials can still be found from web archives).
[14]

Application
See also: Virtual assistant

Aeromexico airline chatbot running on Facebook Messenger, March 2018

Messaging apps
Many companies' chatbots run on messaging apps like Facebook Messenger (since
2016), WeChat (since 2013),[15] WhatsApp, LiveChat, Kik, Slack, Line, Telegram, or
simply via SMS. They are used for B2C customer service, sales and marketing.[16]

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. [17]

Since September 2017, this has also been as part of a pilot program on WhatsApp.
Airlines KLM and Aerom�xico both announced their participation in the testing;[18]
[19][20][21] 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,[22]
for promotion, and to offer additional ways to order from them.[23][24]

A 2017 study showed 4% of companies used chatbots.[25] According to a 2016 study,

80% of businesses said they intended to have one by 2020.[26]

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[27] or Expedia's virtual customer
service agent which launched in 2011.[27][28] 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.[29][30]

Company internal platforms

Other companies explore ways they can use chatbots internally, for example for
Customer Support, Human Resources, or even in Internet-of-Things (IoT) projects.
Overstock.com, for one, has reportedly launched a chatbot named Mila to automate
certain simple yet time-consuming processes when requesting for a sick leave.[31]
Other large companies such as Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Renault
and Citro�n are now using automated online assistants instead of call centres with
humans to provide a first point of contact. A SaaS chatbot business ecosystem has
been steadily growing since the F8 Conference when Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg
unveiled that Messenger would allow chatbots into the app.[32] In large companies,
like in hospitals and aviation organizations, IT architects are designing reference
architectures for Intelligent Chatbots that are used to unlock and share knowledge
and experience in the organization more efficiently, and reduce the errors in
answers from expert service desks significantly.[33]. These Intelligent Chatbots
make use of all kinds of artificial intelligence like image moderation and natural
language understanding (NLU), natural language generation (NLG), machine learning
and deep learning.

Toys
Chatbots have also been incorporated into devices not primarily meant for computing
such as toys.[34]

Hello Barbie is an Internet-connected version of the doll that uses a chatbot

provided by the company ToyTalk,[35] which previously used the chatbot for a range
of smartphone-based characters for children.[36] These characters' behaviors are
constrained by a set of rules that in effect emulate a particular character and
produce a storyline.[37]

IBM's Watson computer has been used as the basis for chatbot-based educational toys
for companies such as CogniToys[34] intended to interact with children for
educational purposes.[38]

Chatbot creation
The process of creating a chatbot follows a pattern similar to the development of a
web page or a mobile app. It can be divided into design, building, analytics and
maintenance.[39]

Design
The chatbot design is the process that defines the interaction between the user and
the chatbot. The chatbot designer will define the chatbot personality, the
questions that will be asked to the users, and the overall interaction.[40][41] It
can be viewed as a subset of the conversational design. In order to speed up this
process, designers can use dedicated chatbot design tools that allow for immediate
preview, team collaboration and video export.[42] An important part of the chatbot
design is also centered around user testing. User testing can be performed
following the same principles that guide the user testing of graphical interfaces.
[43]

Building
The process of building a chatbot can be divided into two main tasks: understanding
the user's intent and producing the correct answer. The first task involves
understanding the user input. In order to properly understand a user input in a
free text form, a Natural Language Processing Engine can be used.[44] The second
task may involve different approaches depending on the type of the response that
the chatbot will generate.

Analytics
The usage of the chatbot can be monitored in order to spot potential flaws or
problems. It can also provide useful insights that can improve the final user
experience.[45]

Maintenance
To keep chatbots up to speed with changing company products and services,
traditional chatbot development platforms require ongoing maintenance. This can
either be in the form of an ongoing service provider or for larger enterprises in
the form of an in-house chatbot training team.[46] To eliminate these costs, some
startups are experimenting with Artificial Intelligence to develop self-learning
chatbots, particularly in customer service applications.

Chatbot development platforms

The process of building, testing and deploying chatbots can be done on cloud-based
chatbot development platforms[47] offered by cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS)
providers such as Oracle Cloud Platform and IBM Watson.[48][49][50] These cloud
platforms provide Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Mobile
Backend as a Service for chatbot development.

Malicious use
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.[51]

Tay, an AI chatbot that learns from previous interaction, caused major controversy
due to it being targeted by internet trolls on Twitter. The bot was exploited, and
after 16 hours began to send extremely offensive Tweets to users. This suggests
that although the bot learnt effectively from experience, adequate protection was
not put in place to prevent misuse.[52]

See also
Applications of artificial intelligence
Eugene Goostman
Interactive online characters
List of chatterbots
SitePal
Social bot
Tay
Twitterbot
Citations
"What is a chatbot?". techtarget.com. Retrieved 30 January 2017.
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(Weizenbaum 1966, p. 36)
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G�zeldereFranchi 1995
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www.everything.com 13 November 1999
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vte
Natural language processing