Definition: chatbot

(1) For OpenAI's AI chatbot, see ChatGPT.

(2) (CHAT roBOT) An AI application that provides a text or verbal interaction with the user in their native language in order to answer questions or generate content including text summaries and essays, images, videos, poems and music. See generative AI.

Also called a "chatterbot," "virtual consultant" and "conversational assistant," the chatbot is designed to emulate normal human responses. In the past, chatbots were generally limited to a specific topic; however, AI-based chatbots today have become general-purpose applications capable of answering almost any question with high degrees of accuracy.

ChatGPT Caused an Explosion
In 2022, OpenAI's ChatGPT caused everyone to pay attention. Since then, chatbots from Google (Gemini), Anthropic (Claude), Meta (Meta AI), Microsoft (Copilot), xAI (Grok) and others have been launched, and the world will never be the same.

Chatbots do give false answers, and people should check with at least two chatbots as well as other sources to get a consensus of opinion (see AI hallucination). See ChatGPT, Gemini chatbot, Anthropic, xAI, Inflection AI and Bing chat.

Chatbots vs. Virtual Assistants
Based on rules and not language models, chatbots debuted in the 1960s, and virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa are 21st century applications that are much more capable. See expert system and ELIZA.

However, modern AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok and Claude that are based on large language models (LLMs) answer everything and the lines are blurry between AI-based virtual assistants and AI chatbots. One distinction experts claim is that the virtual assistant can access the outside world (book travel, reserve a table, etc.), which is what an AI agent can also do. However, modern chatbots can increasingly do agentic tasks, thus, terms will likely not be solidified for some time. See AI agent, Loebner Prize and virtual assistant.

Four Prominent Chatbots

As of mid-2026, AI Toolbox can help people keep track of their conversations in these four chatbots from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and xAI respectively. See AI Toolbox. (Image courtesy of AI Toolbox.)

To explore the variety of topics in this reference, see What's in this encyclopedia.