Term
Chatbot
A program that talks to website visitors or customers in text or voice, answers frequent questions and takes requests. Today it often runs on a large language model and must disclose that it is a machine.
Updated
What it means
A chatbot is a program that talks to people in natural language, most often in a window on a website, in an app or in a messenger. It answers frequent questions, helps find products, takes orders or service requests and hands more complex cases to a person.
Older chatbots followed fixed scripts and understood only prepared questions. Today’s often use a large language model, so they answer unexpected questions fluently, but they can also state false information with confidence.
Under the AI Act people must be made aware that they are talking to a machine rather than a person. The company is responsible for what its chatbot says just as for an employee’s answers: a promised discount or wrong information on a complaint can bind it.
How it works in practice
When deploying a chatbot, we recommend limiting it to verified sources such as the company’s own terms, price list and question database, and keeping it away from topics where a mistake would cost money, such as tax or legal advice without expert review.
Conversations contain personal data, so GDPR applies: informing visitors, a retention period and a processing agreement with the provider. If texts are sent to a model outside the EU, the transfer must be checked, as must whether the provider uses the data for further training.
A chatbot’s value can be measured: how many questions it resolved alone, how many it passed to a person and whether support emails went down. Connecting it to the CRM lets a salesperson see what the customer asked instead of starting from scratch.
What to watch out for
The biggest risk is an invented answer. A chatbot that confirms a non-existent warranty or a wrong withdrawal period creates a dispute in which the company can hardly argue that “the program said it”. Answers to sensitive questions need regular review.
The second mistake is a chatbot with no way to reach a person. A customer stuck in a loop of automatic replies goes to a competitor or complains. A simple button to contact a human is often the best investment.
Need the term explained on your own situation? Consulting from €55 / hour excl. VAT, depending on topic and complexity.