Chatbot News Timeline (1950 – 2010)

Notes:

The development of chatbots and conversational AI technology has a long history, dating back to the 1950s. Here are some of the key milestones on the chatbot news timeline from 1950 to 2010:

  • 1950: Alan Turing’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” was published, proposing the Turing test as a measure of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior.
  • 1966: Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at MIT, developed ELIZA, one of the first chatbots, which could simulate a conversation with a human therapist.
  • 1972: PARRY, a chatbot that simulated a conversation with a paranoid person, was developed by Kenneth Colby at Stanford University.
  • 1984: Racter, a chatbot that could generate its own creative responses, was developed by William Chamberlain.
  • 1995: ALICE, a chatbot that used AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) to generate responses, was developed by Richard Wallace.
  • 2000: Jabberwacky, a chatbot that could learn from its conversations, was developed by Rollo Carpenter.
  • 2005: Zo, a chatbot that could converse with teenagers, was developed by Jonathan Grudin at Microsoft.
  • 2010: Siri, a virtual assistant that used natural language processing to understand and respond to user commands, was developed by Apple.

See also:

Chatbot N-gram Timeline | Chatbot News Timeline 2016 | Chatbot News Timeline 2017 | Chatterbot Timeline | Cognitive Architecture Timeline | Conversational Agent Timeline | Intelligent Virtual Agent Timeline | Twitterbot Timeline

1950

  • In 1950, the Turing test was developed by Alan Turing.

1956

1960

  • In 1960, Richard Wallace, inventor of ALICE and author of AIML was born in Portland, Maine.

1966

  • In 1966, ELIZA, the first chatbot, was created by Joseph Weizenbaum.

1981

  • In 1981, the chatterbot Jabberwacky was created by British programmer Rollo Carpenter on a Sinclair ZX81.

1985

  • In 1985, the wireless robot toy, Tomy Chatbot, repeats any message recorded on its tape.

1991

2000

  • In 2000, Kevin Fox develops AOLiza.

2001

  • In 2001, the Web site for ”A. I.,” Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming film about artificial intelligence, offers an on-screen greeting and invites a typed response on any subject, according to The New York Times.

2002

2003

2004

2006

  • In 2006, Make magazine designed MakeBot, a chat bot for mobile use, according to Bloomberg.
  • In 2006, Morten Lund announced that Microsoft will allow MSN Messenger users to add the IMT Labs chatbot named Spleak.
  • In 2006, the winner of the previous year’s Loebner Prize, Chatbot George was given voice-recognition software.
  • In 2006, the Dutch anti-smoking organisation Stivoro developed a female chatbot.
  • in 2006, 27 year old Filipino programmer Sanchez Roman Canlas won a prize for his “Dr House” chatbot.
  • In 2006, an Australian upstart introduced MyCyberTwin.

2007

  • In 2007, there was an open source AI project by Gregory G. Leedberg to create a Turing test capable chatbot for self and social improvement, called The Billy Project.
  • Jan 21, 2007 – The specialist http://patricioburbano.com/ also states that these robots/chatbots base their operation on learning. This means that the more conversations the chatbot keeps with the netizens the more he learns of human behavior, character and other expressions. In this way he can interact better. Haz nuevos amigos… robots
  • Feb 13, 2007 – For those users who make a lot of use of the Messenger of the network and Microsoft can now get more benefit thanks to Inside Messenger a bot that allows us many possibilities of searches for articles, games, flights and even search videos.
  • Jun 25, 2007 – The Telefoongids has been experimenting since Monday with a so-called chatbot Users can call the bot Finnu via … A chatbot is a virtual contact for the chat program The bot interprets questions that are posed to him and then automatically gives an answer
  • Jun 28, 2007 – The South African born business woman launched her most recent venture MyCyberTwin in April and has already signed up 13000 subscribers to the chatbot site which allows people to create an online clone who can chat through social networks such as MySpace blogs dating sites and instant
  • Aug 29, 2007 – April’s Dell said it couldnt find systems 32 config and after going through a series of troubleshooting steps with a Dell tech in chat he said it was due to a bad sector on the hard drive and it would need to be replaced While that … From Dell Tech Chatbot Tries His Best
  • Sep 3, 2007 – Two widely regarded “chatbots” today are ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), the work of Richard Wallace, and Jabberwacky, created by Rollo Carpenter. Wallace gave ALICE “thousands of possible conversational gambits,” according to Discover’s special issue on the brain (Spring 2007), whereas Jabberwacky “keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements.” Discover had the bots converse with each other. None of the interchange would have satisfied Turing, but bits of it might have appealed to Samuel Beckett. Conversation between two robots drifts into flirtation and philosophy
  • Sep 17, 2007 – … … around international roaming charges and drew cheers by promising to pick one attendee to fly back to Dublin with the company Perhaps the most ambitious startup of the morning Cognitive Code pitched a kind of intelligent chat bot A possible application A next generation Teddy Ruxpin … From Silicon Valley Idol
  • Dec 3, 2007 – Well thanks to artificial intelligence and a chat bot from Microsoft that doesn’ t have to be the case any more. The Register reported today that one of their members “Iain” found a misbehaving chat bot using Windows Live Messenger ID “ northpole@live.com”. During the interchange with … From Microsoft Spikes Dirty Santa Bot
  • Dec 6, 2007 – Microsoft had set up a “chat-bot” Santa to talk to children around the world and spruik the company’s online products. A “chat-bot” is an online personality run by a computer program that mimics natural conversation patterns. The creator adds some information about topics, … From Santa-bot gagged after teen sex talk
  • Dec 11, 2007 – The CyberLover software is Russian-made and could not easily be distinguished from a real human chat partner. The chatbot focuses on people searching for friendship or relationships online. PC Tools To this end, the software would be active on dating sites and… From Flirtende chatbot steelt persoonsgegevens
  • Dec 18, 2007 – Some automated chat features are genuinely helpful for instance IMing a helpdesk chat bot with access to a Q&A database can save users a lot of time searching for information on an FAQ list. The legality of the practice a program misrepresenting itself as a human is dubious but it may … From New uberannoyance: Automated salespeople

2008

  • Jan 3, 2008 – By Barry Welford. If you need to translate to another language and occasionally need help on a word there is a new feature in Gmail Chat that you may find helpful. What you can do is chat to the bot that does Google translations So for example if you want to translate from English to … From Chat with Google Translation Bot | WebProNews – Related web pages www.webpronews.com/blogtalk/2008/01/03/chat …
  • Jan 9, 2008 – Maar het is nog lang niet zover Er worden wel moedige pogingen gedaan om via sites in gewone taal geformuleerde vragen van klanten geautomatiseerd te beantwoorden Zo heeft Fortis sinds een paar maanden een nieuwe hypotheekadviseur in dienst Aad Dat is eenchatbot Hij beantwoordt vragen … From Aad: chatbot 1.0 – Related web pages managementscope.nl/scopist/4-ict/1893-aad …
  • Jan 13, 2008 – … … of artificial intelligence which are automated and designed to do a specific task So a search bot is designed to search for information onlinesuch as spiders indexing the search engines and a chat bot is designed to talk to you and answer your questions with predefined answers … From How to create your own online chat bot – Related web pages www.geeksaresexy.net/2008/01/13/how-to-create …
  • Mar 4, 2008 – FOR those who feel a bit lonely talking on the phone a Japanese company is offering a cellphone that turns into a robot that’s able to chat. Softbank Mobile’s mobile line looks like a small humanoid with arms and legs and the screen shows various faces … From Chat bot responses beat answering machine | The Australian – Related web pages www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897 …
  • Oct 14, 2008 – Tapi siapa yang nyana ternyata Eugene hanyalah sebuah program komputer yang mampu berpikir dan berbicara Ya Eugene adalah program komputer yang mampubercakapcakapchatbot ciptaan seorang programmer asal Pennsylvania Vladimir Vesselov Saat itu Eugene sedang dites dalam sebuah kontes … From VIVAnews – Kontes Chatbot di Inggris: Bila Program Lebih Pandai dari …- Related web pages teknologi.vivanews.com/news/read/2640 …
  • Dec 2, 2008 – Step 1 The proposed Virtual World System will have a facility to enable the memory logging for the user’s Avatar The system will provide facility to provide preferences to enable the chatbot and to set which levels or depths of logging can the avatar log … From IPCOM000176969D: Use Of Avatar to Memorize Relevant User Interested …- Related web pages https://priorart.ip.com/IPCOM/IPCOM000176969D

2009

  • Apr 6, 2009 – The personalized chatbot service performs information supplying and request management on behalf of the enduser either in the textual form online or via voice Two key components of this system are user feature model and task model These two models are generated by crawling historical … From IPCOM000181584D: Personalized chatbot service – Related web pages https://priorart.ip.com/IPCOM/IPCOM000181584D
  • Jun 15, 2009 – Aby sta? si? posiadaczem chat bota i móc korzysta? z jego funkcjonalno?ci wystarczy doda? do swoich kontaktów GG numer 656wwwmojageneracjapl656 Chat botodpowie na zapytania internautów u?atwi wyszukiwanie teledysków ulubionych wykonawców oraz podpowie jakie ciekawe programy wydarzenia … From Startuje chat bot MTV – Gadu-Gadu, MTV – Media2.pl – Related web pages media2.pl/internet/52489-startuje-chat-bot-mtv …
  • Jul 1, 2009 – As the digital generation moves to the Web and other electronic media as preferred communication channels offering a chatbot interface to Web selfservice presents an opportunity to deliver innovative brandbuilding selfservice that can also help cut costs through call deflection Again … From Web Self-Service Will Make You Great – destinationCRM.com – Related web pages www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Web-Exclusives …
  • Jul 20, 2009 – He further adds The new addition of industry’s first chat bot reiterates our mantra of online social investing and would surely help investors better connect with the Stockezy community to together make more informed investment decisions. Stockezy is India’s first online social … From New Stockezy.com introduces real-time Chat bots for IM clients – GTalk, …- Related web pages www.bignews.biz/?id=807104&keys=Stockezy …
  • Oct 23, 2009 – 23 oktober 2009 Een automatische chat via een zogeheten chatbot kan de werkdruk van een callcenter verlichten Een chatbot is een virtuele medewerker wier intelligentie bepaald wordt door de invulling van de database en de toegevoegde applicaties Des te meer antwoorden realtime feeds en … From Managersonline.nl – Chatbot neemt callcenter werk uit handen – Related web pages www.managersonline.nl/vaknieuws/1899/chatbot …
  • Dec 3, 2009 – The voiceenabled chatbot enables the user in realizing a conversational interface for setting monitoring and retrieving performance metrics data using a … In a scenario the voiceenabled chatbot may accept a user input via a chat interface and may reply via a voice Alternatively the … From IPCOM000190530D: Method and System for Setting, Monitoring and …- Related web pages https://priorart.ip.com/IPCOM/IPCOM000190530D
  • Dec 30, 2009 – The designer of the Chatbot program is Rollo Carpenter who specializes in programming humancomputer interaction and is the mastermind behind the … However that’s the big difference between JabberwackyChatbot design and other computer programs professing to have humancomputer … From 221b Game Brings AI Into the 21st Century – Related web pages www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/12/30/221b-game …

2010

  • Apr 13, 2010 – Disney Channels Benelux maakt gebruik van de World of Alice chatbot van Ecreation voor de promotie van haar televisieprogramma Hannah Montana World of Alice biedt Disney de gelegenheid om met een groot deel van haar doelgroep te communiceren via een platform dat zij dagelijks gebruiken … From … .nl – Algemeen – Disney Channels Benelux zet chatbot in voor promotie tv- …- Related web pages www.admanager.nl/online/nieuws/9749 …
  • Apr 15, 2010 – SOA AIDS en Trimbosinstituut lanceerden de chatbot begin 2009 De jongeren die de chatbot Bzz aan hun vriendenlijst hebben toegevoegd zijn gemiddeld 15 jaar Over een periode van 10 maanden stelden zij gemiddeld 25 vragen over seks en 4 vragen over alcohol en drugs Van de vragenstellers … From Nieuw op druginfo – Chatbot Bzz | Trimbos – Related web pages www.trimbos.nl/nieuws/trimbos-nieuws/nieuw-op …
  • Apr 20, 2010 – Chatbot Bzz is door 52.000 jongeren toegevoegd aan hun vriendenlijst in het chatprogramma Windows live Messengervoorheen MSN Deze jongeren zijn gemiddeld 15 jaar Over een periode van 10 maanden stelden zij gemiddeld 25 vragen over seks en 4 vragen over alcohol & drugs Van de … From Meer jongeren verkiezen seks, alcohol & drugs chatbot boven … – Related web pages www.soaaids-professionals.nl/actueel_bericht/2865
  • Aug 10, 2010 – Vodafone Portugal’s implementation of eGain Service includes web selfservice knowledge management email an innovative chat bot and live web … Moreover the fullspectrum web selfservice implementation provides customers with an animated chat bot to guide them around the web site and … From Vodafone Portugal Delivers Superior Online Customer Experience With …- Related web pages www.marketwatch.com/story/vodafone-portugal …
  • Aug 10, 2010 – 10 Aug 2010 . Learn more, read reviews, and download Pandora Radio by Pandora Media, Inc. on the iTunes App Store. Here We Will Supply You With The Cheap Pandora Jewelry To Provide You With A Quick Way To Get Replica Pandora. Try To Get Your… Show more From Hot Video: pandora – Related web pages www.alkayalicorp.com/images/news.php?page …
  • Aug 11, 2010 – … … for Vodafone Portugal subscribers Vodafone Portugal’s implementation of eGain Service includes web selfservice knowledge management email an innovative chat bot and live web chat The project has transformed Vodafone Portugal’s customer service operations into a unified multichannel … From Vodafone Portugal picks eGain for online customer service – … – Related web pages www.telecompaper.com/news/article.aspx?cid=750593
  • Aug 23, 2010 – Gripe Line reader Dave recently became entangled in a particularly frustrating experience with a Microsoft tech support chat bot that left … Dave argued with the chat bot, citing the ad copy on the 2010 products, which, he said, ” advertises that if I download it, I can download it … From Microsoft tech support bot goes rogue | Adventures in IT – InfoWorld- Related web pages www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/microsoft …
  • Oct 26, 2010 – Humans arent the only ones who can steer a conversation to their own benefit This year’s winner of the Loebner prize for the most convincing chatbot used such a trick to fool a human judge earning its creator a $3000 prize. The Loebner prize is awarded for a version of the Turing Test … From Prizewinning chatbot steers the conversation – tech – 26 October 2010 – …- Related web pages www.newscientist.com/article/dn19643 …
  • Nov 4, 2010 – PhysOrgcom A software developer has created achatbot program for Twitter to automatically detect set phrases associated with arguments put forward by those skeptical of anthropogenic global warming and to send automated replies of set phrases debunking their arguments … From Chatbot auto-tweets replies to climate change arguments – Related web pages www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-chatbot-auto …
  • Nov 10, 2010 – Since it is a chatbot program that automatically replies to a set of canned phrases it doesnt know how to pick up sarcasm or know when the tweet is using one of those key phrases to reject the global warming deniers logicANI. From Now, Twitter chatbot that counters anti-global warming tweets – Oneindia …- Related web pages news.oneindia.in/2010/11/10/nowtwitter-chatbot …
  • Nov 12, 2010 – Van de vragenstellers zegt 48% een voorkeur te hebben voor de chatbottegenover 40% voor zoekmachines Ook worden de kwaliteit van de adviezen de snelheid en het gemak van de chatbot beter door de jongeren gewaardeerd Soa Aids Nederland en het Trimbos Instituut lanceerden de chatbot … From ZorgKrant.nl – Related web pages www.zorgkrant.nl/?command=item&id=463
  • Nov 12, 2010 – … … pogra? w gry zna zarówno ?wietne dowcipy jak i odpowiedzi na ka?de pytanie Korzystanie z chatbota jest bardzo proste i ca?kowicie darmowe Chatbot Alice okaza? si? wielkim sukcesem w Holandii sk?d pochodzi jest tak?e dost?pna w j?zykach angielskim hiszpa?skim francuskim oraz polskim … From e-biznes.pl: Alice mieszka pod 16 – GG16, Ecreationa, Alice, chatbot- Related web pages www.e-biznes.pl/inf/2008/22546 …