Amidst the buzz of AI and chatbots, a lot of people are confused between the terms and they even tend to mix them up together. Chatbots and AI are closely related, but they are not exactly the same thing and there are Difference between AI and chatbots! AI is the field of incorporating human intelligence into machines and thus majorly deals in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning.
In NLP, AI deals with how the program understands and process the user’s input (audio or text). On the other hand, Machine Learning helps the code to evolve and learn from user’s interactions over the period of time. Now, talking about Chatbots which are intelligent non-fiction creatures designed for businesses to interact with their customers in a more personalized manner than ever. The Difference between AI and chatbots are so subtle but significant that we decided to research on the subject and write this article.
Before we list down the Difference between AI and chatbots, let us first understand how many types of Chatbots we have, here we go:-
– Rule-based chatbots: These types of chatbots are one-dimensional and are intended to perform only the core function of the business. In technical terms, the code is rather simple as they are developed to perform based on defined parameters. The main motive of simple rule-based chatbots is to understand the requirements of the customers in a better way. However, they do lack the ability to learn and scale over the period of time.
– AI-based chatbots: AI chatbots are heavy programmed bots which use the concepts of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to handle business tasks efficiently. Unlike rule-based chatbots, they learn and scale from their past experiences and give almost a human touch to the customers. These chatbots are usually backed complex and state of the art designed machine learning and NLP algorithms. Best of all, they can take real-time decisions based on the past data and understand customer’s context to an extent while interacting.
So which one best suits your business? The answer lies in your objective itself. If you just want a simple functionality, then simple chatbots will do fine as their development cost is way cheaper than AI based bots. But, if you want advanced real-time analytics and efficient decision making (based on past data), then you should invest in AI chatbots instead and in both case, you should be aware of the Difference between AI and chatbots.
Now, let’s understand AI. AI is basically a program which is very good at solving problems on its own as compared to chatbots. Intelligently written code doesn’t count into AI unless the developer is using heavy machine learning algorithms. So, AI is a process of enhancing a program to take real-time decisions more efficiently, accurately, and with a minimal requirement of human touch. On the other side, chatbots are the real-world products which may or may not include AI traits.
In terms of personalized user experience, AI-based bots clearly win over simple chatbots as they can decipher user’s query and understand its intent and context which obviously helps them to provide more optimized results. So, you can see the Difference between AI and chatbots is enough wide to take a choice.
We at Agicent can develop both simple chatbots and AI-based bots to cater your business requirements. Our developers are also growing in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and with the release of iOS 11, they have now new Augmented Reality and machine learning APIs to play with. We started developing AI based apps quietly last year, and now working on some real cool projects that are going to be live. We’re creating AI apps primarily for B2C requirements, mostly related to offer consumers choice of purchases and then facilitating whole purchase lifecyle from them, like selecting the pizza and pasta out of the menu and then purchasing and then getting delivery and all via chats and empowered by AI.
The AI engine learns over time, and we also keep on updating the code side to make them more efficient. There are projects where AI is empowering whole business and not only consumer, like on one hand it is selling stuff to the consumer, and on another hand handling the ordering system, managing inventory, and then out of the money earned running campaigns. Despite Difference between AI and chatbots, both mostly go hand in hand and we should efficiently utilize power of both to achieve right results.
If you want to get an AI-based or simple rule-based chatbot developed for your business, send us your inquiry at [email protected] to get a price quote.