Chatbot meaning
The chatbot meaning is straightforward: a program you work with by having a written conversation. The word covers two very different things, depending on whether you mean the 2015 kind or today's kind.
What the chatbot meaning covers today
Old chatbots ran on rule lists: a keyword triggered a written answer. Type something unexpected and the conversation hit a dead end, which is where the word got its bad reputation.
Today's tools are built on language models, so they generate text instead of looking up prepared replies. That is why they can answer a question nobody wrote a script for.
What did not change
A chatbot knows only what it is given. A support bot that cannot see your order will not help you, however good the underlying model is.
So a good deployment is not really about conversation. It is about what data and what actions the thing has access to.
What it is used for at work
Drafting a first reply, handling repeat questions, answering a specific question from a long document, making an internal knowledge base searchable.
What not to hand over: a decision someone has to be accountable for. The bot prepares, a person approves.
Common questions
What is the chatbot meaning in one sentence?
A program you work with by having a written conversation. The word says nothing about what runs behind it, which can be a rule list or a language model.
Is a chatbot the same as AI?
No. A chatbot is an interface, AI is what may or may not run behind it. Plenty of chatbots contain no AI at all, only a rule list.
Is every chatbot artificial intelligence?
No. Decision tree bots are entirely rule based. To the user the interface looks the same, while the technology behind it is completely different.