What Is a Chatbot? - IBM
A chatbot is a computer program that simulates conversation with human end users. It often uses NLP to parse inputs and generative AI to automate responses.
AI chatbot
The terms chatbot, <anchor>AI chatbot</anchor> and virtual agent are often used interchangeably, which can cause confusion. While the technologies these terms refer to are closely related, subtle distinctions yield important differences in their respective capabilities.
Conversational AI Chatbot | IBM
HomeAI and MLwatsonxAssistantBuild powerful generative AI assistants

Enhance conversational experiences with Gen AI voice and chat assistants that scale across your business.

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Natural language AI can understand human conversation from multiple sources

Bring generative AI capabilities into any virtual assistant

IBM watsonx Assistant is a conversational AI platform for building chat and voice assistants that can automate customer self-service and deliver exceptional experiences powered generative AI capabilities you can trust.

Build with watsonx Assistant using:

-Our no-code/low-code user interface designed for business users

-Market leading IBM Granite Large Language Models (LLMs) available out-of-the-box

-Customized Large Language Models or models of your choice using watsonx.ai

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Check out the different pricing options for your watsonx Assistant subscription and get started with building your first AI assistant today.

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Benefits

Capitalize on the advantages of IBM’s innovative conversational AI solution.

AI technology constantly enriched by cutting-edge research

Assistant partners with IBM Research to deliver innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing (NLP) and understanding, conversational AI, generative AI, and automation, infusing these innovations directly into Assistant.

Access customized watsonx LLMs with the flexibility to bring your own LLMs

Assistant leverages IBM foundation models trained on massive datasets with full data tracing, designed to answer questions with accurate, traceable answers grounded in company-specific information. Bring your own LLMs to customize your virtual assistant with generative capabilities specific to your use cases.

Personalized chatbots that can guide users without breaking

watsonx chatbots gracefully handle messy customer interactions regardless of vague requests, topic changes, misspellings, or other communication challenges. The powerful AI engine knows when to answer confidently, when to offer transactional support, or when to connect to a human agent.

## Related features

Conversational search with generative AI

Conversational search leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), designed to generate accurate, conversational answers grounded in your company’s content. Move away from manually building rules-based FAQ chatbots - it’s easier and faster to use generative AI in combination with your knowledge base to automatically generate answers in response to the wide range of questions you might receive from your customers. Get started now using watsonx Assistant’s step-by-step starter kits and low-code custom extensions framework.

See how watsonx Assistant transforms content with AI

Improved reasoning and user intent recognition

Our natural language understanding (NLU) engine uses a new foundation model based on transformer architecture to better understand human language and classify requests with a fraction of the training effort. AI bots built on watsonx Assistant can achieve an exceptional level of classification accuracy with an average of just 5 training examples per topic, simplifying workflows and saving teams the hours, days, or weeks of data analysis formerly needed to train their virtual assistant to understand customers.

Learn about watsonx Assistant's new transformer architecture

Autolearning AI technology

When users interact with virtual assistants, they often choose between various resolution methods. Self-learning generative AI chatbots built on our conversational AI platform employ algorithms that automatically learn from past interactions how best to answer questions and improve conversation flow routing.

Learn more about autolearning

## Frequently asked questions

Generative AI refers to deep-learning models that can generate text, images, audio, code, and other content based on the data they were trained on.

watsonx is IBM’s enterprise-grade, cloud-native, AI and data platform, that infuses business operations with intelligence and enables AI builders to train, validate, tune, and deploy generative AI that leverages data wherever it resides, with responsibility and transparency.

You can also reap the benefits of generative AI and foundation models by using IBM’s AI-enhanced products, like watsonx Assistant, the conversational AI platform that empowers even nontechnical employees to builds robust virtual agents, that deliver exceptional digital experiences.

Customer Service

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Marketing & Sales

Conversational AI chatbots are often used by companies to provide 24/7 assistance to buyers and guide them through complex omnichannel journeys. By leveraging powerful analytics, brands can drive more compelling conversations and provide a personalized shopping experience that converts passive visitors into engaged prospects. Explore marketing chatbots.

AI assistants need to seamlessly call out to and pull information from the ever-growing world of web apps. An API (application programming interface) is a software intermediary that enables two applications to communicate with each other by opening up their data and functionality. App developers use an API’s interface to communicate with other products and services to return information requested by the end user. watsonx Assistant enables easy connection to third-party APIs for streamlined workflows and effortless integration with channels, CRM systems, databases, search tools, contact center as a service platforms, customer support tools and more. Explore watsonx Assistant integrations.

Yes, with watsonx Assistant you can deliver omnichannel customer experiences. Virtual agents can be deployed across multiple channels and apps to amplify customer engagement. We offer built-in integrations and extensions for web chat, phone, SMS, mobile apps, social media messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Intercom, Amazon Alexa and others. Explore watsonx Assistant integrations.

Yes, by leveraging integrations with search tools like Watson Discovery, Coveo, Google Custom Search, Magnolia and others, you can enable virtual agents to search through your company’s existing documents, websites, and enterprise applications (including Salesforce, SharePoint, Box, IBM Cloud Object storage, etc) to provide accurate answers to customer inquiries. Explore watsonx Assistant search integrations.

Yes, our templates catalog now includes industry categories (healthcare and financial services), extension starter kits, and more. You can leverage these and our low-code/no-code conversational interface to build chatbot skills faster and accelerate the deployment of conversational AI chatbots.

Today, chatbots can consistently manage customer interactions 24x7 while continuously improving the quality of the responses and keeping costs down. Chatbots automate workflows and free up employees from repetitive tasks. A chatbot can also eliminate long wait times for phone-based customer support, or even longer wait times for email, chat and web-based support, because they are available immediately to any number of users at once. That’s a great user experience—and satisfied customers are more likely to exhibit brand loyalty. Explore customer service chatbots.

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Ready to build easy-to-use, AI-powered chatbots?

Schedule a personal demonstration with a product specialist to discuss what watsonx Assistant can do for your business or start building your AI assistant today, on our free plan.

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