Glossary
Conversational AI
Definition
What is Conversational AI?
Conversational AI is the family of technologies that let software hold a natural dialogue with people through text or voice. It includes chat assistants on websites and WhatsApp, voice agents on the phone, and the language models, speech recognition and text-to-speech that power them.
Last updated:
Scripted chatbot versus LLM assistant
Older chatbots followed decision trees and failed on anything unexpected. LLM-based assistants understand intent, so a customer can ask the same thing ten different ways. The cost is that they need guardrails: a knowledge base to answer from, and rules for when to say 'I don't know'.
| Scripted chatbot | LLM assistant | |
|---|---|---|
| Understands rephrasing | No | Yes |
| Needs a knowledge base | No | Yes |
| Can take actions | Rarely | Yes, with tools |
| Risk of wrong answers | Low, but often unhelpful | Managed with guardrails |
Frequently asked questions
Which channels can a conversational AI run on?
Website chat, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp Business, SMS, email and phone. The same assistant logic can serve several channels with channel-specific formatting.
Related terms
Further reading
Workflows
Related services
Have a process like this? Tell us about it.
Book a call