What is chatbot?

A chatbot is any program that holds a text conversation with a person. Two kinds share the name. A rule-based chatbot follows a script: buttons, menus and keyword matches that lead to canned replies, and nothing outside the script. A generative chatbot writes each reply with a language model, so it can answer questions nobody scripted, and can also answer them wrongly.

The word matters because vendors use it as a contrast. When a product page says "not a chatbot, an AI agent", it usually means the rule-based kind, and the comparison flatters the newer product. To the customer both kinds are chatbots, because both appear as a chat window. Live chat, where a person types the replies, is a third thing again, and most support products now combine all three in one widget.

Where definitions split: some teams reserve "chatbot" for the rule-based kind and "AI agent" for anything built on a language model. Others use chatbot for everything that chats and agent only for software that can also act, through tools such as an order lookup. Neither usage is wrong, so when a benchmark reports chatbot resolution rates, check which kind it measured. A scripted bot and a grounded generative one fail differently: the first cannot answer off-script, the second can answer confidently and be wrong, which is why the fallback message and the handoff matter more for the generative kind.