Glossary
Chatbot
A chatbot is any program that answers you in a chat window. Older ones followed rigid scripts; modern AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini understand free-form language and can actually hold a conversation.
“Chatbot” is the umbrella word for anything you talk to through a chat box. The word covers two very different generations, and it pays to know which one you’re dealing with.
The old generation is the airline bot that only understands “REFUND” or “BAGGAGE” and loops forever if you type anything else. It follows a script, like a phone menu with text. The new generation runs on an LLM: you can write “my flight got cancelled and I’m stuck in Lisbon with two kids” and it follows the actual situation.
Your plumber asking ChatGPT to draft a quote and the cookie-banner support widget on a shop’s website are both “chatbots,” but only one of them can genuinely help with open-ended problems.
Where you’ll meet this
Everywhere: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are AI chatbots; so are the support widgets on bank and shop websites (quality varies wildly), and WhatsApp business bots. When a website says “chat with us,” check whether you’ve got a script-follower or a real AI assistant. The difference is whether it understands sentences it has never seen. To pick a proper one for daily use, try the AI chooser.