A chatbot (also known as a talkbot, chatterbot, Bot, IM bot, interactive agent, or Artificial Conversational Entity) is a computer program which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing test. — Wikipedia

The shortest way to describe the Turing Test is this: let’s converse via text messages with either a human and a computer, each isolated in its own closed room. If we can’t tell the machine from the human, the former has passed the test. That Turing, by the way, never intended to be taken literally: he was just describing abstract properties of a hypothetical, intelligent machine. More, his test was originally intended to tell a man from a woman just by looking to the transcripts of their answers; only later he thought to probe a mechanic intelligence.

Talking Heads

However, simpleness beats complexity every day in these Internet years; so, let’s just say that we’re used to knowingly talk with machines today, be them ATM tellers or AI-powered vocal assistants, and we want to find out if chatbots are going to help wealth management companies to provide services to their customers.

For those of you still inclined to the discovery game, have a look to Chatbots.org for finding lots of conversation opportunities. Just remember that Facebook hosts more than 100,000 chatbots and you’ve been likely talking with one of them for years without noticing. You’d better think of building one perhaps, or reading this enlightening beginner’s guide. Chatbots are with us nearly since the dawn of the Internet, but machine learning and Artificial Intelligence are going to give them an entirely new meaning.

We hope to having got you interested about chatbots now. Because we are going in a next article to say something about their use in the Fintech world.