The term for AI that is uses chat as it's interface. Examples of such bots are (I've tried my best to summise what these types of bots do): But are they really smart?:

Depends.. for goodness sakes do NOT talk about Star Trek it seems to be hard coded in most of the bots. One test that seems to work great (I've tripped up Alice and some other bots with it) is the telling a joke. Try the following;

  • a typical joke that most English speakers(!) would get i.e. knock knock jokes
  • a joke in bad taste (racial, parentage etc etc)
  • a joke that is not really a joke, that only a human or cognitive being would ponder and query the validatity of it being a joke.

See also: Turing Test, Loebner Contest, HAL, Self awareness