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If a bot creator has created a bot to do illegal things, then the bot itself is illegal. For example, in the U.S., it is illegal to buy tickets using a bot and then resell them at a high markup for profit, a practice known as ticket scalping. Also, as per California's, B.O.T. (“Bolstering Online Transparency”) Act, it is illegal for anyone to communicate online with a person in California via a bot to incentivise a sale or transaction, or to influence a vote in an election – without disclosing that the communication is via a bot.

Bots used for acts like content scraping, price or product scraping, automatic ticket booking, accessing new account promotions, sending form submission or comment spam, or to leave rogue reviews are not necessarily illegal. However, they are unethical and hurt either businesses or consumers, or both.

Bots created for business use, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots or chatbots used in customer service are perfectly legal. The best and easiest way to create legal bots is via Gupshup's user-friendly, cloud-based IDE and creation tools.

Bots have become ubiquitous now so it's difficult to imagine a world where they didn't exist. The Turing Test, developed in 1950 by English computer scientist Alan Turing laid the foundation for later bot technology. In the 1960s, ELIZA, one of the earliest AI-based bots, was developed.

A few years later saw the development of Shakey, a robot with limited language and self-direction capabilities. In the 1970s, Freddy, a non-verbal robot, could assemble simple objects without human intervention. It wasn't until the 1990s that consumer-facing bots (mostly computer games) were developed.

In 2000, SmarterChild, a pre-programmed bot was released within American Online Instant Messenger (AIM). It is believed to be the forerunner of Apple's Siri. In the early 2000s Stanley, a vehicular bot was invented. Post 2011, household robots like Roomba, AI personal assistants and voice-activated services like Siri and Alexa were released. Today, bot creators create bots for voice search, customer service, social media conversations, business-to-customer interactions, and much more.

Want to create your own bot for your customer-facing business? It's easy – with Gupshup's bot platform and IDE! Click here to get started.

You can create a bot for free using any number of free, open-source tools. However, it's important to first check exactly what your customers need from you, and what purpose the bot will serve. Next, it's critical to verify the tool's capabilities. Does it offer a low-code or no-code platform? Can you integrate any bot you create with this tool with other business platforms? Can you program the bot to send customised messages? How far does the bot mimic human speech and mannerisms?

Free tools may not provide the advanced functionalities you need, so it's okay to start off with them, but then you should upgrade to a paid tool like Gupshup. Click here to know how Gupshup's bot platform and IDE support developer and non-developer bot creators.

Regardless of a bot creator's skill or competence, bots have not yet reached the stage where they can write human-sounding scripts. However, Gupshup's IDE Bot Builder can be used to create scripts for bots. With its scripting tool, bot creators can create bot conversations, i.e. interaction paths between bots and users – even if they don't have coding knowledge. Get started here.

The cost of creating a bot depends on the platform used by the bot creator. Free, open-source tools are easily available on the Internet to create bots. However, to create a business bot that will communicate with customers and be the best “face” of your brand, you need a more reliable platform and tools, plus integrated logs and analytics to optimise its performance. All this is only possible with Gupshup's bot platform and IDE. Click here to know more.