In the last decade, Chatbots have become quite popular. Be it because of Siri, Cortana or Alexa, Chatbot is a thing now and becoming part of our daily life. However, Chatbot is not a new thing. Neurologists and scientists have been working on Chatbots for a long time.
In this article, we will discuss the history and evolution of Chatbots. Let’s start from 1950-
1950- Turing Test
In 1950, Alan Turing put up a question “if machines can think?” and submitted his theory about the first concepts of AI. He was the person who invented Turing Test. Turing test is a way to identify you are talking to a machine or a human.
1966- Eliza
Eliza is considered as the first chatbot. It was created by Joseph Weizenbaum at the MIT laboratory. At that point of time, Elize was able to convince some of the popularity that it is more likely a human. However, it could not pass the Turing test.
1972- Parry
After 6 years of Eliza’s invention, PARRY came out. The creator Kenneth Colby made it better than the previous one. In a survey among professional psychiatrists, only 48% could identify that PARRY is not a human. However, sadly PARRY could not pass the Turing test.
1984- Racter
Racter was next. It was reportedly said that the book ‘the policeman’s beard’ was written by the Chatbot Racter. However, Ractor was never publicly released and later on described as a basic computer program overrated as a writer.
1988- Jabberwacky
After the initial success of the other Chatbots, Jabberwacky was the next. The previous ones were entirely text-based Chatbots. However, This was had a voice. Jabberwacky could not only think like a human but also sound like one. However, it was not able to pass the test.
1992- Dr. SBAITSO
It was an AI speech Synthesis program for MS-DOS based systems. It was basically a psychologist with a digital voice. It could not pass the Turing test.
1995- ALICE
A popular online bot was A.L.I.C.E. which was presented in 1995. It was a language processing robot. Although It could not pass the Turing test, he received many other rewards for being the most advanced bot of his time.
2001- Smarter Child
Smarter Child was a chatbot, especially for SMS. On AOL, MSN and other messengers it offered fun messages, interactive chats. It was also the possessor of Apple Siri.
2006- IBM’s Watson
In 2006, IBM Watson came up. It was initially developed to compete with a TV show “JEOPARDY’ where it defeated two of the former champions. Later on, it went bigger and better. It is helpful to get an analysis of a large amount of data using machine learning and neural languages. To build your chatbot on IBM’s Watson, hire chatbot developers who are specialized in a wide array of industry verticals.
2010- Siri
Siri is an intelligent personal assistant offered by Apple. It is a part of iOS and can answer quite humanely. Siri is quite efficient in finding data from the web and perform web-based service requests.
2012- Google Now
Google Now is built by Google for Google mobile apps. It can perform various search-based tasks using a neural language. It has many humane features and quite helpful for smartphone users.
2015- Alexa/ Cortana
The new generation chatbots are capable of voice interaction. Alexa is an Amazon chatbot that inhibits in Amazon Echo device. It can interact with humans and perform web-based tasks.
Cortana is a Microsoft bot that fetches data from Bing and provides web-based services. Also, it is good for Windows troubleshooting.
2016- Messanger Bots
Facebook has introduced messager bots in 2016. It helps users to get a prompt response and saves support time. Messager bots have improved themselves by the time and now it helps users with greater insights.
Do you know any other chatbots? Please mention in the comments.
Want to build your own chatbot? Hire Chatbot developers from ValueCoders (One of the best IT outsourcing & software development service in India).
