Chatbots & AI assistants
Dated sources are over 18 months old; other dates are unknown.
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 6
Newest dated source: 2023-11-27
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Open in the glossary Reading notes · Structured record
In plain language
An application you interact with through conversation; an LLM can provide its text generation. [1] [2]
Reference this explanation or suggest a correction
Link to this explanation · Suggest a correction · How corrections work
Limits & distinctions
A model, the app using it and the company providing it are different things. A chat interface alone does not tell you which tools it can use. [6] [3]
Reference this explanation or suggest a correction
Link to this explanation · Suggest a correction · How corrections work
A fuller explanation
In an LLM-powered chatbot, the chat interface sends messages to a model and displays its replies. An assistant may also have search, saved context or connected tools. Those features belong to the application around the model. [2] [3] [4]
Reference this explanation or suggest a correction
Link to this explanation · Suggest a correction · How corrections work
How it relates to the map
To assess a chatbot, inspect its actual access and behavior rather than assigning it a political position. [5]
Reference this explanation or suggest a correction
Link to this explanation · Suggest a correction · How corrections work
Share this page
https://theaiatlas.org/ideas/chatbot/
Download a share image · Vector image
Image previews are summaries. Keep the page link so readers can check the evidence.
Sources and what we read
1. Machine Learning Glossary
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read the artificial intelligence, deep model, context window, inference and chat entries. Used for terminology, not product performance claims. Updated date follows the earlier displayed page date; initial publication is unspecified. The chat entry was reread during the same-day beginner-content review. Also read the generalization and compute entries.
2. What is Gemini and how it works
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read the introduction describing the Gemini app as an interface to Google's multimodal language models. Used for naming and app/model distinction, without endorsing performance claims. No exact publication date established.
3. Tool use
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read tool descriptions, model-generated call requests, application execution and returning results to the chat. Example functions were not run. Used for the separation between requesting and executing an action; live page publication date unspecified.
4. Memory FAQ
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read memory, context, controls and the legacy saved-memory explanation. Used as one provider's example; not generalized to all chatbots. Relative update wording was not converted to an invented exact date.
5. Guidelines for secure AI system development
Source is over 18 months old.
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Newest dated source: 2023-11-27
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read executive summary and lifecycle structure. Guidance addresses complete AI systems and recommends security throughout design, development, deployment and operation. Recommendations are not evidence of any organization's implementation.
6. Models
Publication dates and source age
Sources counted: 1
Publication dates are unavailable.
Assessed at this edition's evidence cutoff: 2026-09-15. 18-month boundary: 2025-03-15.
Some publication dates are unknown; the newest dated source may not be the newest source overall.
Publication age does not tell us whether a claim is still valid. Reading an old source again does not make its publication date newer. An update date does not establish that the passage we used was updated.
Read architecture, weights, checkpoints, loading and saving. Used to distinguish a model's structure and learned values from the application around it. Example code was read, not executed; live page publication date unspecified.
Edition and machine-readable evidence
Content version 0.20.0. Evidence cutoff 2026-09-15; this does not mean every source was read on that day.
Pinned complete dataset · Complete evidence page · Agent consumption guide