In 1994, Michael Mauldin coined the name "chatterbot". The word "chatbot" comes from the name "chatterbot".

More than 1.4 billion people use chatbots worldwide today. As a result, businesses are introducing their best AI chatbots to have one-on-one conversations with clients and staff. AI-powered chatbots can automate various tasks, including customer service, administrative, and operational tasks, as well as sales and marketing.

An excellent chatbot platform makes it easier to work with chatbots by including all of the necessary infrastructure and communication features. Businesses can build bots in less time by following chatbot best practices and focusing on actual business problems rather than researching communication protocols and resolving infrastructure issues. There is numerous open-source chatbot software available today. Now, let's examine some of the most influential open-source chatbots.

Botpress

Botpress is an open-source conversational AI application that supports numerous Natural Language Understanding (NLU) libraries. In addition, Botpress is to construct chatbots utilizing visual flows and minimal training data in the form of intents, entities, and slots. This approach drastically reduces the cost of developing chatbots and lowers the entry barrier that data requirements can create.

In addition, Botpress is with a visual conversation builder and an emulator for conversations. The built-in JavaScript code editor permits the coding of actions that we can use to accomplish specific tasks. You can define intents, entities, and slots using the NLU module. This approach allows your conversational assistant to comprehend the user's input. Furthermore, Botpress actively maintains integrations with popular messaging services, such as Facebook Messenger, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Telegram. The platform is designed primarily for programmers who require an open system with maximum control. The visual conversation builder makes it simple for a conversation designer to take over and collaborate with a developer on a project.

DeepPavlov

DeepPavlov permits both novices and professionals to create dialogue systems. It provides developers and NLP researchers with comprehensive and adaptable tools for creating production-ready conversational skills and complex multi-skill conversational assistants. You can solve classification, NER, Q&A, and other NLP tasks with deep learning models such as BERT and other state-of-the-art deep learning models.

In addition, DeepPavlov Agent enables the development of industrial solutions with multi-skill API integration. Furthermore, DeepPavlov models are now in an Nvidia NGC and Docker Hub-hosted, simple-to-deploy container. Python is used to create DeepPavlov, licensed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Microsoft Bot Framework‍

The Microsoft Bot Framework (MBF) provides developers with fine-grained control over the chatbot-building experience and access to numerous pre-built functions and connectors.

The MBF offers many tools to facilitate the creation of chatbots. It can also integrate with Luis, its engine for understanding natural language. Furthermore, Microsoft also acquired the open-source platform Botkit. Botkit is more of a visual conversation builder emphasizing the user interface actions available.

OpenDialog

OpenDialog is a 2018-born enterprise-scale, open-source, conversational AI platform. It allows for efficient deployment, integration, and training. Their intelligent conversation engine permits users to personalize and integrate as needed. In addition, the adaptable NLU support enables you to employ the most effective AI techniques for the problem.

In addition, OpenDialog also includes a conversation designer that allows users to rapidly design and prototype conversations without writing any code. As a result, you can manage and future-proof your strategy for conversational AI. Furthermore, the open-source and easily extendable architecture facilitates innovation, while the reusability of conversational components across solutions makes this a scalable tool for your team.

Rasa

Rasa is an open-source bot-building framework that takes a story-based approach to chatbot development. Rasa is a well-known open-source natural language understanding engine and framework. They are concentrating on artificial intelligence and developing a framework that will allow developers to build and improve their AI assistants constantly. In addition, Rasa will enable developers to create stories (training data scenarios) designed to train the bot rather than defining visual flows and intents within the platform.

Furthermore, Rasa is on-premises, and its standard NLU engine is open source. Rasa X is a set of tools designed to assist developers in reviewing conversations and improving the assistant. Rasa also has a slew of premium features that come with an enterprise license. Every chatbot platform requires some training data, but Rasa performs best when given a large training dataset, typically in the form of customer service chat logs. These customer service chats are parsed, organized, and classified before being fed into the NLU engine.

Tock

Tock is a comprehensive platform for developing conversational agents and bots. However, it neither supports nor relies on third-party APIs. Instead, tock endorses the creation of stories and analytics, has a conversational DSL for Kotlin, Node.js, Python, and REST APIs, and can connect to multiple text/voice channels, including Messenger, WhatsApp, Google Assistant, Alexa, and Twitter.

Furthermore, Tock provides toolkits for custom web/mobile integration with React and Flutter and Docker support for deployment in the cloud or on-premise. Tock is under the Apache 2.0 License.

Wit.ai

Wit.ai is a framework for open-source chatbots that Facebook acquired in 2015. Wit.ai has a well-documented open-source chatbot API that allows new platform developers to get up and dash. Wit.ai is a good option if you intend to deploy your bot on Facebook Messenger because Facebook owns it. Facebook facilitates the deployment of Wit.ai chatbots on Messenger.

In addition, Wit.ai's chatbot framework features a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine that is robust and capable compared to Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM. The Wit.ai SDK is available in multiple programming languages, including Python, Ruby, and Node.js. Furthermore, Wit.ai integrates easily with numerous platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Slack, Wearable devices, and home automation.