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bot
This term is a clipped form of robot, shifting the focus from the physical machinery of the past to the digital automation of the present. It carries a neutral to slightly clinical connotation when referring to utility tools like search engine crawlers, but can take on a negative or sinister tone when associated with malicious activity, such as botnets or spamming operations.
In modern discourse, the word frequently bridges the gap between pure software and physical hardware. While it primarily describes invisible scripts running on servers, it is equally applicable to small-scale autonomous physical units in industrial settings, emphasizing the repetitive and programmed nature of the task over the complexity of the machine.
Meanings
An autonomous program on a network that performs repetitive tasks.
The website uses a bot to index pages for search engines.
A software application designed to simulate human behavior or conversation, often using artificial intelligence.
The customer service bot handled the initial inquiry before transferring it to a human agent.
Examples
The company deployed a bot to monitor social media mentions in real time.
I wonder if this chat bot can actually solve my problem or if it is just a script.
Stop using a bot to spam the forums with fake links.
The hotel has a small bot that delivers towels to the guest rooms.
Is that a real person or just a bot responding to my messages?
The developer wrote a simple bot to automate the data entry process.
A cleaning bot hummed quietly as it navigated the corridor of the space station.
The ticket bot snapped up all the front row seats in milliseconds.
I need to configure the bot to send alerts whenever the server goes down.