About

An Internet Bot is a type of application built to run various automated tasks on the Internet, which can be used for commercial, novelty or malicious purposes.

History

The first bots to play multiplayer games were created for modified Telnet clients connected to Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs),^[2] which originated in the late 1970s.^[1] Players could use customized scripts to automatically send commands to the game server, providing a competitive edge in the game. In June 2005, the bot Glider was released by MDY Industries for "World of Warcraft":, which allowed players to collect gold, level-up and perform other tasks while away from their computer. In July 2008, a court ruled that MDY Industries was liable for tortuous interference and copyright infringement, ordering the company to pay Blizzard Entertainment $6 million. In December 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the bot violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. ^[3] On June 1st, 2011, YouTuber BosmouZ Valve posted footage of a bot playing an online match of Counter-Strike: Source (shown below, left). On January 22nd, 2015, YouTuber ZybakTV uploaded footage of a World of Warcraft battleground match overrun with bots (shown below, right).

Chatterbots

In 1981, British programmer Rollo Carpenter coded the first incarnation of a chatterbot program that was created to trick people into thinking they were talking with another human, thereby passing the “Turing Test”. Following the creation of the first Internet chat network Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988, users began writing bot scripts to perform automated tasks in chatrooms. In 1997, the bot was called “Jabberywacky”, and was first launched on the Internet. Two Jabberwacky characters, George and Joan, won the Loebner prize in 2005 and 2006. In October of 2008, the Cleverbot variation of the chatterbot was released. In December 2010, a special high-powered version of Cleverbot won the BCS Machine Intelligence Competition^[8], where the events audience voted Cleverbot 42.1% Human (on average).^[9] On August 26th, 2011, the Cornell Creative Machines Lab uploaded footage of two chatterbots talking to each other (shown below). Within five years, the video gained over 4.7 million views and 6,600 comments.

Web Bots

Web bots are programs that track keywords entered on the Internet in order to make predictions about future events. that search for information on the World Wide Web. In June 1993, computer scientist Matthew Gray produced the first web robot known as the World Wide Web Wanderer,^[4] which attempted to measure the size of the World Wide Web.

Botnets

A botnet is a group of computers connect to the Internet linked together by software to perform tasks in unison. Botnets are known for performing large-scale DDOS attacks by working together to flood the bandwidth of a targeted network.

Spambots

Spambots are programs designed to send and post high volumes of messages to a variety of targets. Initially spambots were associated with unsolicited advertisements sent to email addresses, but later became prolific on web forums, community sites, Usenet newsgroups and social media.

Search Interest

External References