New Delhi, Feb. 20 -- Conversational AI, the captivating realm where machines mimic human dialogue, has come a long way since Eliza's rudimentary exchanges in the 1960s. Fuelled by advancements in natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and deep learning, it has evolved from rule-bound robots to remarkably adept companions. The story begins with pioneering chatbots like Eliza, employing pattern matching and pre-programmed rules to simulate basic conversations. While limited in scope, these early attempts laid the groundwork for understanding user intent and formulating simple responses.

The late 20th century saw the rise of statistical NLP, where machines learned from vast data sets. Hidden Markov and statistical langua...