Artificial intelligence (AI) is among the top technological trends in many spheres, including e-commerce. However, the concept of AI has its roots in antiquity: Realistic humanoid automatons appeared in Greek myths, ancient Egyptian sculptures, and other ancient civilizations. The idea of creating a machine that could imitate human thinking has been developing by Chinese, Indian, Greek and European scholastic philosophers, including Aristotle.
In 1872, the idea of “mechanical consciousness” was first voiced in science fiction by Samuel Butler in his novel “Erewhon”. After that, there were a lot of talking about AI, which we are skipping and moving straight to the question of when AI chatbots were actually invented. AI chatbots were invented in 1966, when Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, the first computer program capable of holding a human-like conversation. ELIZA is considered the prototype of modern chatbots: the program used “pattern matching” and other techniques to imitate the dialogue between a psychotherapist and a patient. ELIZA gave dialogue participants the illusion of human conversation and understanding. It even passed the Turing test, a method for determining whether a computer can trick humans into believing it is also human during virtual communication.
This is what the conversation with Eliza looked like:
Example of Eliza in GNU Source: Wikipedia
Fun fact: Siri knows who Eliza is. 🙂
ELIZA was a breakthrough for its time, but due to the early state of computer technology, chatbots remained largely experimental for decades. It wasn't until computing power and mobile technology advanced that chatbots gained genuinely wide practical application.
It’s all about smartphones
The advent of smartphones spurred the active development of AI, and chatbots in particular. As smartphones reached mass adoption, web designers faced the challenge of fitting websites onto small screens. Creating a website that maintains its functionality and looks good across all devices -- desktop, tablet, and smartphone -- became a critical task in the web design world. The challenges created by these small-display devices led to the popularity of mobile apps, and messaging apps in particular became among the most widely used.
And then it all begun…
The proliferation of messaging apps boosted the advancement of chatbots -- interactive software applications that use messaging as the interface to provide information or perform tasks such as setting an alarm, scheduling a meeting, or helping users find the products they need. Chatbots are especially well suited for mobile devices: many of them exist on messaging platforms such as Messenger, Snapchat, or Slack.
AI has advanced so much that chatbots can now lead highly engaging, human-like conversations, allowing businesses to use affordable and cost-effective technology to reach more consumers and automate a range of processes. This kind of automation is a natural extension of how effective SaaS services can streamline business operations more broadly.
Businesses continue to invest in bot commerce, recognizing its long-term potential. Numerous e-commerce brands have already implemented chatbots on messaging and collaboration channels for customer support, human resources, or even Internet-of-Things (IoT) projects. Third-party chatbot solutions now exist that let online retailers embed chatbots into their websites quickly and easily, an approach that fits well within API integration solutions tailored for small businesses.
For vendors who run chatbot systems for e-commerce or are planning to build one, API2Cart offers a way to save money and time on shopping cart integrations. We have built a unified API that lets you integrate your chatbot system with many platforms at once, reflecting the broader shift toward unified eCommerce integrations. We also maintain all the connections, so you don't need to worry about further upgrades when new versions of e-commerce platforms come out.
If you would be interested to hear more about what we do and how our API can power your application, drop us a line or schedule a quick call with our representative.
What do you think the future holds for chatbots? Leave your opinions in the comments section below.
