# Cleverbot

Cleverbot is a chatterbot web application created by British AI scientist Rollo Carpenter, launched in October 2008, that learns responses from human conversations and has held over 150 million interactions.

Cleverbot is a chatterbot web application created by British AI scientist Rollo Carpenter and launched in October 2008. It is a conversational agent that learns from human input rather than relying on pre-programmed responses, making it a notable example of [machine-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning) in early consumer AI. Cleverbot was preceded by Jabberwacky, a chatbot project that began in 1988 and went online in 1997. In its first decade, Cleverbot held several thousand conversations with Carpenter and his associates, and since launching on the web, the number of conversations has exceeded 150 million. The application is available as a web service and as mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

## Operation

Cleverbot's responses are generated by searching its database of past conversations. When a user types input, the system finds keywords or exact phrases that match the input, then retrieves how a human previously responded to similar queries. The response is chosen heuristically using fuzzy logic, comparing the whole conversation to millions of prior interactions. This approach contrasts with rule-based chatbots like Eliza, which follow fixed scripts. Cleverbot's learning is continuous, with the system growing at a rate of 4 to 7 million interactions per day. As of 2014, it used over 279 million interactions, representing about 3-4% of the data it had accumulated.

Cleverbot participated in a formal Turing test at the 2011 Techniche festival at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati on 3 September 2011. Out of 1,334 votes cast, Cleverbot was judged to be 59.3% human, compared to 63.3% for human participants. A score of 50.05% or higher is often considered a passing grade. The software running for the event handled only 1 or 2 simultaneous requests, whereas online Cleverbot typically converses with 10,000 to 50,000 people at once.

## Developments

Since its launch, Cleverbot has undergone behind-the-scenes updates. In 2014, it was upgraded to use GPU serving techniques, improving its ability to handle large-scale interactions. The developers have been working on a new version using [machine-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning) techniques, though details remain sparse. Cleverbot's architecture is based on a proprietary engine called Cleverscript, which powers not only the main chatbot but also derivative applications.

One such application is Clevernator, a game of 20 Questions where the player asks questions and the AI must understand and answer factually. Another is Cleverme!, an app for Apple products that allows users to create and converse with their own small Cleverbot-like AI. These applications demonstrate the versatility of the Cleverscript engine beyond simple chat.

## In popular culture

Cleverbot received media attention after being featured in the popular 2010 creepypasta ARG web serial Ben Drowned by Alexander D. Hall. In early 2017, a Twitch stream of two Google Home devices modified to talk to each other using Cleverbot garnered over 700,000 visitors and over 30,000 peak concurrent viewers, highlighting the public's fascination with AI conversation.

## See also

- [Siri](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/siri)
- [Cortana](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/cortana)
- Google Assistant
- Omegle
- [ChatGPT](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/chatgpt)
- [Character.AI](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/character-ai)

## References

This article is based on information from the Wikipedia article on Cleverbot, licensed under CC BY-SA.

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/cleverbot
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-07T02:35:47.144327+00:00