A chatbot is any software system that interacts with users through conversation. The category spans a huge quality range: from 2010s-era rule-based FAQ bots that failed on anything off-script, to 2026 LLM-powered assistants that handle nuanced multi-turn conversations, personalise responses, and take real actions on behalf of the user.
Modern chatbots use RAG to answer from proprietary knowledge, prompt engineering to enforce tone and guardrails, and AI agents for multi-step tasks. Popular deployment surfaces: website widgets, WhatsApp, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and in-product overlays.
Good LLM chatbots today feel like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. Bad ones still feel like a decision tree — usually because the team skipped the retrieval and eval layers.