The concept of chatbots may be traced back to Alan Turing's seminal work Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which addresses whether machines can think.

The so-called Turing test would take on the characteristics of this inquiry. The test is administered as an imitation game in its most basic configuration. A human interrogator communicates with several systems and people through an interface in the trial. The Turing Test is considered to be passed if the interrogator cannot tell computers from humans.

Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, built the chatbot ELIZA between 1964 and 1966 as one of the earliest implementations of natural language. ELIZA was first designed to mimic the conversational style of a Rogerian psychotherapist by using simple pattern matching and a template-based response (prewritten scripts). ELIZA sparked worldwide interest in creating a natural language bot that could pass the Turing Test. The Loebner Prize, established in 1990 by Hugh Loebner and the Cambridge Center for Behavioural Studies in Massachusetts (U.S.), is an example of a competition specifically designed to implement the Turing Test and builds on both the growing interest and advancements in AI.

American scientist Richard Wallace created ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) in the late 1990s by extending the pattern-matching techniques employed in ELIZA and enhancing NLP capabilities. ALICE, commonly known as Alicebot, is renowned for its innovative use of Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML), an XML format for developing natural language software agents. In July 2001, Wallace released the initial version of AIML and later published the Pandora API, upon which ALICE is based. ALICE won the Loebner Award thrice in 2000, 2001, and 2004.

Rollo Carpenter, a British programmer, was conceiving "Jabberwacky" concurrently with ALICE. projects. Jabberwacky was designed to replicate "normal human conversation in an enjoyable, amusing, and natural way." Jabberwacky was able to process responses based on a dynamic database of thousands of online human interactions made possible by the advent of the Internet. Jabberwacky won the Loebner Prize under the aliases George and Joan, in 2005 and 2006, respectively. In 2008, Jabberwacky introduced a new variant renamed "Cleverbot." Cleverbot, like Jabberwacky, is designed to learn from human talks (more than 150 million to date, according to Wikipedia). It uses previous encounters to determine future inquiries and responses.

Conclusion

The project aims to develop an AI that can pass the Turing Test. It is designed to mimic human contact to communicate with users. It is not intended to serve any other purposes. The learning technique differs from conventional AI programmes in that it is meant to be used for amusement rather than for computer support systems or business representation. Recent advances have enabled a more scripted, controlled approach to sit on top of the broad conversational AI, aiming to combine the best of both techniques. Use in the sectors of sales and marketing is now in progress.

Furthermore, the programme will eventually transition from a text-based system to an entirely voice-operated system, learning purely from auditory and other sensory inputs. Finally, its inventor thinks we can implement it into household items like talking dogs or robots to be entertaining and valuable while keeping people company.