6-Mute English from BBCLearningEnglish.com

Hello, this is 6-minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil.

And I'm Rob.

Now, I'm sure most of us have interacted with a chatbot.

These are bits of computer technology that respond to text with text,

or respond to your voice.

You ask a question, and usually it comes up with an answer.

Yes, it's almost like talking to another human, but of course it's not.

It's just a clever piece of technology.

It's becoming more sophisticated, more advanced and complex,

but could they replace real human interaction altogether?

We'll discuss that more in a moment and find out if chatbots really think for themselves.

But first, I have a question for you, Rob.

The first computer program that allowed some kind of plausible conversation between humans and

machines was invented in 1966, but what was it called?

Was it A, Alexa, B, Eliza, or C, Parry?

Well, it's not Alexa. That's too new, so I'll guess C, Parry.

I'll reveal the answer at the end of the program.

Now, the old chatbots of the 1960s and 70s were quite basic,

but more recently, the technology is able to predict the next word

that is likely to be used in a sentence, and it learns words and sentence structures.

Hmm, it's clever stuff. I've experienced using them when talking to my bank or when I have

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