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Concept
Chatbot
Summary
A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application that aims to mimic human conversation through text or voice interactions, typically online. Modern chatbots are artificial intelligence (AI) 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 technologies often utilize aspects of deep learning and natural language processing.
Recently this field has gained widespread attention due to the popularity of OpenAI's ChatGPT, followed by alternatives such as Microsoft's Bing Chat (which uses OpenAI's GPT-4) and Google's Bard. Such examples reflect the recent practice of such products being built based upon broad foundational large language models that get fine-tuned so as to target specific tasks or applications (i.e. simulating human conversation, in the case of chatbots). Chatbots can also be designed or customized to further target even more specific situations and/or particular subject-matter domains.
A major area where chatbots have long been used is in customer service and support, such as with various sorts of virtual assistants. Recently, companies spanning various industries have begun using the latest generative artificial intelligence technologies to power more advanced developments in such areas.
In 1950, Alan Turing's famous article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" was published, 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 to the extent 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.
Official source
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