How to Make a Chatbot in 2022

The first chatbot ELIZA was introduced in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum. ELIZA was able to fool the audience into believing that they were talking to a real human. However, it was not a very intelligent chatbot, but it was a start to a new domain of technology. After the introduction of AI, chatbots have become more intelligent and smart. If you want to make an AI chatbot of your own, this article will guide you on how to make a chatbot.

How Does a Chatbot Work?

A chatbot takes any query as input and gives an appropriate response as output. The older or simpler chatbots have a set of pre-defined answers that it gives as a response to the user input. The modern and advanced chatbots use AI and Natural Language Processing(NLP) that gives a more reliable and correct response.

These modern chatbots are now used in B2B and B2C environments to do simple tasks. Businesses use these chatbots where there are not many responses to any query.

Different Types of Chatbots

Chatbots can be divided into three major categories based on their function and their ability to respond.

1. Rule-based chatbots – These chatbots are built like a tree. The first response starts with the bot giving the visitor a list of questions he might ask. After the user selects any of his desired queries, the new set of queries and responses of the chatbot is now available. Rule-based chatbots are often used to guide the visitor or get any contact information from the visitor.
2. AI-based chatbots – They use Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Natural Language Processing(NLP). AI chatbots scan the user query and takeaway specific keywords, and correlate them to generate the correct response. Since these responses depend on the user keywords, therefore they grow their response database regularly to provide a better query result. These chatbots are most likely to go off the rail since these do not have any set of pre-defined responses.
3. Hybrid chatbots – They are a combination of both Rule-based and AI-based chatbots. The databases of these chatbots have pre-defined responses, and also they can generate new responses from users’ input keywords.

How to Make an AI Chatbot?

Now let’s discuss how to make a chatbot app for yourself and what would be the cost to build a chatbot application. You need to follow a few steps before you can start building chatbots powered by AI.

1. Purpose of your chatbot – What purpose do you want your AI chatbot to serve? Who is the audience you are building your chatbot for? After answering these questions, you can select a Rule-based or AI chatbot, depending upon your requirements.
2. Platform – When you want to make an ai chatbot, you should know what platform do you want your chatbot to work on? It could be a website, mobile application, or instant messaging application. It is best to opt for a multi-platform strategy so that you do not have to worry about any future development of the AI chatbot.
3. Technology stack – There are a number of frameworks available for you to make your own chatbot. Some of them are;

• Gensim
• Python Natural Language Processing with NLTK
• TestBlob
• spaCy
• CoreNLP
• PyNLPl

While picking any of the above frameworks, you must know the future aspect of your chatbot. Whether you will be able to add voice-driven chatting or not? Are these libraries and SDK compatible with your existing software?

1. Build the conversation flow – After you have chosen the technology stack now, you can start building the conversation flow. It is really simple to just make a list of questions and answers if you are creating a rule-based chatbot. For an AI chatbot, it is better to hire expert developers than work on your own.
2. Test and train your chatbot – If you have built an AI chatbot, you need to train it to work with different queries. However, for a rule-based, you can skip this part. There are various tools available to train your chatbot. Some of them are-

• QBox
• Chatbottest
• Zypnos
• NAIZ
• Botium

After training your chatbot using any of the above tools, now is the time to test the bot by asking various queries and seeing if the responses are correct or not.

1. Maintenance – The maintenance of the chatbot is really important. There will be queries for which your chatbot may not work properly, and you must prepare a set of exceptional results to tackle the problem.

The Bottom Line

If you follow the above steps, you can make an AI chatbot for your website, application, and almost anything that requires basic human interaction. While these chatbots may not be perfect, they can still reduce your workload and help your customers or any users of your services.