Chatbot
Quick definition
A chatbot is a computer program that holds a conversation with people in natural language, by text or voice, to answer questions or complete simple tasks. Modern chatbots range from scripted decision trees to assistants built on large language models.
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A short history
The first well-known chatbot, ELIZA, was written by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT and described in 1966. It matched keywords in what the user typed and returned pre-written patterns, yet many people felt understood by it. For decades, chatbots kept that principle: recognise a keyword or a button, return a prepared answer.
Messaging apps brought chatbots to business in the mid-2010s, mostly as menus and decision trees inside Messenger or a website widget. Large language models changed the picture from 2022 onwards: a chatbot can now understand free-form questions and write an answer instead of picking one from a list.
Rule-based chatbots vs AI chatbots
A rule-based chatbot follows a script written in advance: buttons, keywords and branches. It is predictable and cheap to run, and it never invents anything, but it fails as soon as a customer phrases a question in a way the script did not foresee, and every new case has to be written by hand.
An AI chatbot uses a language model to interpret the question and generate the reply. It handles typos, several questions in one message and dozens of languages. Its risk is the opposite one: without access to verified information it can produce a fluent but wrong answer. That is why business chatbots are usually connected to a knowledge base and, increasingly, given tools to act — at which point they are better described as AI agents.
What a chatbot does in customer service
In support and e-commerce, a chatbot typically answers repetitive questions (delivery times, returns, opening hours), helps visitors find a product, collects contact details, and routes the conversation to the right team when it cannot help. A well-run chatbot is measured on how many questions it resolves, how satisfied customers are afterwards, and how cleanly it hands difficult cases to a person.
The common failure is the dead end: a bot that loops on “I didn't understand” with no way to reach a human. Customers judge a chatbot less on what it answers than on what happens when it cannot.
Chatbots in AI SmartTalk
AI SmartTalk assistants are AI chatbots grounded in the business's own content — website pages, documents, FAQ entries and, for online stores, the synced product catalog — and equipped with tools, which makes them AI agents. The same assistant can be published on a website chat widget, WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Telegram and other channels, and can pass a conversation to the team when a person is needed.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a chatbot and a virtual assistant?
The terms overlap. “Virtual assistant” is often used for chatbots that do more than answer — booking, ordering, looking things up — or for voice assistants. What matters is whether the system only replies or can also act on your systems.
Are chatbots still rule-based?
Many still are, especially for narrow flows like a menu of options. Most new customer service chatbots use a language model to understand questions, often combined with a few fixed flows for steps that must always happen the same way.
Can a chatbot replace a support team?
No. A chatbot can take a large share of repetitive questions and answer at any hour, but complaints, exceptions and sensitive cases still need people. The goal is to free the team for those, not to remove it.
How do I know if a chatbot is working well?
Track the share of conversations it resolves without help, customer satisfaction after the chat, the questions it fails on, and how often customers ask for a human. Reading a sample of real conversations every week is the most useful check of all.