by Charles Miller

Several weeks ago I wrote here about the mixed results I received in the process of asking the same question of seven different Artificial Intelligence chatbots. More than one reader wrote to me asking if I could publish a list of "all the AI chatbots" so they could try each one. The answer to that unfortunately is no, and I will try to explain why not.

The very first web page went live on the internet in 1991. By 1992 there were still only 10 web pages. After that there was an explosion of interest. There were 130 in 1993, 2,738 in 1994, 23,500 in 1995, 257,601 in 1996. After that the numbers of websites online were in the millions. Can you see the exponential trend? Clearly, making a list of today's estimated 1,100,000,000 web sites would be impractical if not impossible.

Putting aside the academic and experimental AI programs of past decades, the recent explosion of interest in AI started when OpenAI allowed public access to its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, on November 30, 2022. This new technology instantly became a worldwide sensation as AI technology was licensed and incorporated into what is now an unknown number of websites.

Making a list of all the AI chatbots would be impossible, mainly because the existence of an AI chatbot on a web site can be well hidden. Understand that AI chatbots are not just a new web page but rather a rapidly expanding segment of online interactive tools that are being incorporated into existing websites, often without anyone noticing. Meta Platforms Inc. estimates that on its facebook.com site there are now over 300,000 individual AI chatbots in operation. These chatbots serve a variety of purposes, primarily for businesses to automate customer service, marketing, sales, etc. When a business says "contact us on Facebook" what that means is that you will most likely be interacting with a Social Media Chatbot and not a real person. Unfortunately, the same goes for dating web sites, but that is a rant for another day.

Back to that mention of the term "Social Media Chatbot" in the last paragraph. What is that? It is defined as a chatbot designed to engage users in social media activities, including marketing/support as well as simulated personal interactions. It is one of many of the main categories of chatbots. These include but are not limited to AI-Powered Chatbots, Contextual Chatbots, Generative AI Chatbots, Hybrid Chatbots, Keyword Recognition-Based Chatbots, Knowledge Base Chatbots (aka FAQ bots), Menu or Button-Based Chatbots, Rule-Based Chatbots, Transactional Chatbots, Voice Chatbots, and the aforementioned Social Media Chatbot.

I might quickly exceed my allowance of column inches were I to try to explain each of the above this week, but come back next week and I will see how much progress I can make explaining more about the broad categories of chatbots enumerated above.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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