“What is the difference between a Chatterbot and a Chatbot?”

A Chatterbot is a program that attempts to simulate typed conversation, with the aim of at least temporarily fooling a human into thinking they were talking to another person. Most of the programs on this site are from the 80's and 90's and were designed for the purpose of humans having long form conversations with an 'AI'. In recent years what have become known as Chatbots have emerged mainly for Question and Answer and Virtual Assistant purposes. This site covers historical Chatterbots.

I am your host, Simon Laven, and you will find dozens of Chatterbots in the categories on the left. They can be accessed over the web or downloaded to your PC, mainly as DOS programs.

(A write-up of this site in Britain’s The Observer newspaper once joked that after they had downloaded ELIZA from here, they had to “rummage around in the attic to find a computer sufficiently underpowered to run it”).

If you want to read up on the subject or get hold of movies from 2001 to Short Circuit, The Simon Laven Page also offers a selection of top Books and Movies related to Artificial Intelligence.

So click on the links on the left to begin exploring the world of Chatterbots, and if you have any comments or questions then please e-mail me at simon@simonlaven.com. I hope you enjoy your visit.