# AI chatbot

> An AI chatbot is a program that answers people in a chat using a language model, in their own words, rather than from a fixed script of buttons.

Canonical: https://heykiko.io/glossary/ai-chatbot
Last updated: 2026-11-05

## What it means

Also called conversational AI.

A rule-based chatbot follows a decision tree someone wrote. An AI chatbot understands free text and writes each reply, usually from a business's own content through retrieval-augmented generation.

When it can also take actions, it's usually called an AI agent.

**Example.** “Do you deliver on Sundays?” is answered from your delivery page, even though nobody wrote that exact question into a script.

## Related

- [AI agent](https://heykiko.io/glossary/ai-agent)
- [RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)](https://heykiko.io/glossary/rag)
- [Knowledge base](https://heykiko.io/glossary/knowledge-base)
- [AI agent vs chatbot](https://heykiko.io/blog/ai-agent-vs-chatbot)
- [Full glossary](https://heykiko.io/glossary)