Definition: bot

(1) For industrial and humanoid robots, see robot.

(2) For AI that answers questions and generate media, see chatbot.

(3) A "botnet" is a network of compromised computers that act in unison to do harm.

(4) The software that indexes the Web for search engines is called a "bot" or "crawler."

(5) (BOT) (Beginning Of Tape) The status of a magnetic tape file when it is first mounted in the drive.

(6) (BOT) (Bulk-Only Transport) An early USB protocol for storage drives. BOT was superceded by the USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP).

(7) A program that creates or repeats messages on social media.

(8) Software that searches for good deals over the Internet. "Scalper bots" find cheap merchandise to be resold at a higher price. Trader and crypto bots look for stock market and crypto trades.

(9) A "spambot" is software that captures email addresses over the Internet.

(10) "CAPTCHA" software requires human interaction ("which squares have traffic lights?") to avoid bots that automatically fill in forms.

(12) (roBOT) A program that performs a repetitive function 24/7 or waits in the background to be triggered by an event (time of day, receipt of data, etc.). The term bot is used for myriad "intelligent agents" on the Web, and it is estimated that half the traffic over the Internet comes from bots and not humans. A bot can be programmed to do almost anything from posting a message to starting up or closing down other software processes, and it can run in a user's machine or server. See AI agent.