A chatbot is a language interface to an AI. Chatbots give us a text box in which to type our questions in natural language and the AI will attempt to understand our meaning and respond to it intelligently and productively. The key word here is “attempt”.
Because it doesn’t always happen. We type in a tough question only to be met with a page of boilerplate support tips and links. That’s where AI comes in. Interpretation of our natural language is the beginning of giving a useful response. “What is the best case for my iPhone?”, for example, might prompt a series of questions from the chatbot to determine what kind of iPhone you have and what your taste in cases might be. All this could result in a response: “Invisible Armor by Scratchless and the Phone Sock by Hangups look like good options. Would you like to see some?” What just happened there? The software internalized the desires of the user, used AI to consider thousands of options and offered only a handful of carefully chosen products. That’s a good chatbot.