A chatbot is part of the large and evolving field of artificial intelligence and is a software that
simulates and processes written or spoken human conversations, allowing the user to interact, for example in a telephone conversation, as if they were interfacing with a real person.
The term comes from ‘chatterbot’ coined in 1994 by Michael Mauldin (the creator of the ChatBot Verbot).
They can be designed as anything but complex programmes or particularly sophisticated ones such as voice assistants that, by storing data obtained from conversations with users, evolve to provide ever better assistance as the experience improves.
There are two main types of chatbots:
– ‘declarative’, which are the most widely used and are lowly evolved programmes that focus on performing a single function, generating standard automated responses to user requests. The conversation with this type are those applied in support and service contexts (e.g. telephone operators, utilities, etc.), capable of handling common responses;
– ‘predictive’ (conversational), conversation-based, often referred to as virtual or digital assistants
(e.g. Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa), and are the most sophisticated. They are aware of the context in which they operate and use knowledge and understanding of language to improve and learn to do better and better in order to provide personalisation of conversations based on the profiles of the users interacted with. The more advanced ones manage to connect several chatbots under a single group, extracting information from them, each extracting information useful for its own context.
Their strength lies in being able to be present 24/7, achieving two goals: to replace ‘human’ call centres and to guarantee service in all conditions, net of failures on the line they operate on. Moreover, they are appreciated by customers who find them quick and immediate even if not particularly effective, an aspect that will most likely be overcome thanks to artificial intelligence in a machine learning perspective.
SOURCES AND IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
- What is it: https://www.oracle.com/chatbots/what-is-a-chatbot/ ;
- What they are and what benefits they bring to companies: https://www.ai4business.it/robotica/chatbot/chatbot-cosa-cosa-ce-dietro-successo/
- Artificial Intelligence (AI): https://www.ileaderprojecterasmus.eu/2022/09/20/artificial-intelligence/
VIDEO
- What are chatbots?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX6zqaEHAdw&ab_channel=GCFLearnFree.org ;
- How does it works?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NehjeN7A2o0&ab_channel=CallCentreHelperTV
IMAGES (in sequential order)
- storyset from Freepik ;
- mohamed Hassan from Pixabay ;
- macrovector from Freepik .