Jargon:Chatbot
2 min read
Say this at the party
“A computer program you can have a conversation with. The idea is older than the Moon landing, and the word is older than Google.”
In plain English
A chatbot is a computer program you can talk to. You type or speak, and it answers in everyday words. The name is just "chat" plus "bot", and "bot" is short for robot.
Old-style chatbots follow a script. They spot keywords and pick a ready-made reply. Modern ones, like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, run on a large language model. That's a program trained on huge amounts of text to guess which words most likely come next. It's why they sound so natural.
Sounding natural isn't the same as being right. A chatbot can say something false in a perfectly confident voice, so it's worth double-checking anything that matters.
Where it came from
In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT published a paper on ELIZA, a program that spotted keywords in what you typed and turned them back into questions, a bit like a therapist. When it got stuck, it said things like "go on". The word came later. In 1994, Michael Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University wrote about "chatterbots" in a conference paper, describing his bot Julia, which chatted with people in an early online text world. Merriam-Webster dates the short form "chatbot" to 1994 too, though its exact first printed use isn't known.
See it in action
In 2022, Air Canada's chatbot told a customer, Jake Moffatt, he could claim a bereavement discount after booking his flight. Another page on the same website said he couldn't. Air Canada argued it wasn't responsible for what its chatbot said. In 2024, a Canadian tribunal disagreed: the chatbot is part of the website, so the airline is responsible for it.
What people get wrong
- "It understands me." This feeling is so common it has a name: the Eliza effect, believing an AI is cleverer and more human than it really is. People felt it with ELIZA back in the 1960s.
- "It's always right." A smooth, confident answer is not proof of a correct one.
- "Chatbots are brand new." The word is over 30 years old and the idea is about 60.
- "If the bot said it, the company isn't to blame." At least one tribunal has ruled the opposite.
Go deeper
- PaperMichael L. Mauldin, 1994CHATTERBOTS, TINYMUDS, and the Turing Test: Entering the Loebner Prize CompetitionThe 1994 paper that named "chatterbots", starring a bot called Julia.
- PaperJoseph Weizenbaum, 1966ELIZA-- A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and MachineThe Computer History Museum's record of the paper behind the first famous chatbot.
- GuideMerriam-WebsterCHATBOT Definition & Meaning - Merriam-WebsterA short dictionary definition, and the 1994 date for the word.
- ArticleEllen Glover, Built In, 2023What Is the Eliza Effect?How ELIZA worked, and why we keep thinking chatbots understand us.
- PostBarry B. Sookman, McCarthy Tétrault, 2024Moffatt v. Air Canada: A Misrepresentation by an AI ChatbotA law firm's take on the case where an airline answered for its chatbot.
Related jargon
Drafted with AI. The AI Council (Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini) gave counsel. Phin signed it off.