Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Bots – They Make Website Chats More Efficient

There’s no denying it, and there’s no hiding it. We are talking about the widely discussed phenomenon where AI is rapidly revolutionizing the IT industry. How can this intriguing fact be utilized and transformed into a positive aspect? What do artificial intelligence and bots have to do with chat on a website? What are chatbots and how do they work? You will learn about these and other pieces of information in our blog article. Dive boldly into its content. Welcome!

Bots – What Are They and How Were They Created?

In the last century, more precisely in 1966, an engineer from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the United States, Joseph Weizenbaum (1923 – 2008), created the first-ever bot named ELIZA. This program (a kind of imitation of a psychoanalyst visit) could, among other things, use keywords to initiate and continue a conversation with a human. It could also motivate them to continue the conversation. At the time of writing this article, there is information online that a bot from one of the Big Tech corporations gained self-awareness, which resulted in the dismissal of the engineer who worked on this solution. These two facts can be connected, giving us an image of a very modern and useful technology that, when used inappropriately, can pose certain risks. You will read about them below.

How Do Bots Work and What Can They Do?

Bots, which are incredibly typical and very characteristic of artificial intelligence, learn machine learning (most often through reinforcement learning) to communicate and conduct conversations. Thanks to this, they can efficiently answer questions, ask them, draw conclusions, and make decisions. Bots handling chats on websites have been dubbed chatbots. They can replace a consultant (although sometimes a consultant joins the conversation), and by conducting conversations very effectively, they improve the quality of a company’s customer service. Moreover, because they are not biological entities, they have no physiological needs, such as rest or sleep, so they can work without any breaks. In this context, they surpass human capabilities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Bots – They Make Website Chats More Efficient

There’s no denying it, and there’s no hiding it. We are talking about the widely discussed phenomenon where AI is rapidly revolutionizing the IT industry. How can this intriguing fact be utilized and transformed into a positive aspect? What do artificial intelligence and bots have to do with chat on a website? What are chatbots and how do they work? You will learn about these and other pieces of information in our blog article. Dive boldly into its content. Welcome!

Bots – What Are They and How Were They Created?

In the last century, more precisely in 1966, an engineer from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the United States, Joseph Weizenbaum (1923 – 2008), created the first-ever bot named ELIZA. This program (a kind of imitation of a psychoanalyst visit) could, among other things, use keywords to initiate and continue a conversation with a human. It could also motivate them to continue the conversation. At the time of writing this article, there is information online that a bot from one of the Big Tech corporations gained self-awareness, which resulted in the dismissal of the engineer who worked on this solution. These two facts can be connected, giving us an image of a very modern and useful technology that, when used inappropriately, can pose certain risks. You will read about them below.

How Do Bots Work and What Can They Do?

Bots, which are incredibly typical and very characteristic of artificial intelligence, learn machine learning (most often through reinforcement learning) to communicate and conduct conversations. Thanks to this, they can efficiently answer questions, ask them, draw conclusions, and make decisions. Bots handling chats on websites have been dubbed chatbots. They can replace a consultant (although sometimes a consultant joins the conversation), and by conducting conversations very effectively, they improve the quality of a company’s customer service. Moreover, because they are not biological entities, they have no physiological needs, such as rest or sleep, so they can work without any breaks. In this context, they surpass human capabilities.

Does This Mean That All Bots Are Good and Helpful?

Unfortunately, the answer to the above question is: no. There are many examples of bots that can and should be characterized as malicious software of various types. Below we have listed six examples of such malicious bots:

• SPAMbots – The word SPAM is quite popular. Although it is mainly associated with a cluttered email inbox, not everyone knows that it took its name from an English canned meat product (made from lower-quality meat). What are SPAMbots? They are nothing more than junk software, sending unwanted emails with advertisements, fraud attempts, phishing attempts, and viruses in links, etc.;
• DDoS bots (distributed denial of service) – These bots extort personal data, disrupt or weaken system performance, etc.;
• Zombie bots – The creator of such a bot can, for example, control another device that it has previously infected. In some cases, zombie bots can form botnets, which are groups of bots used for mass attacks;
• Registration bots – This malicious software can steal data to register fake accounts on various websites;
• Crawlers, creepers, spiders – This software is similar to algorithms that classify a website for SEO (similarly to how Googlebot works), but is more malicious. It can, for example, steal important information from a website or gain access to it without the owner’s expressed consent;
• Scrapers – Automated software that copies content from one website to another without the consent of the authors or owners of the “borrowed content.”

What can happen when interacting with such a bot?

The bots mentioned above can unfortunately be used by hackers for unacceptable and even criminal practices, such as phishing, smishing, vishing, and many other hacker attacks and cyber threats. These can lead to the loss of personal data, financial losses, and more. Therefore, it is essential to be cautious, remain vigilant online, and pay attention to avoid falling victim to such attacks. That is why security measures like CAPTCHA and many others are available on the internet. It’s important to protect yourself from these possibilities, especially when you know the risks involved.