Artificial Life was selling chatbots in 1998, decades before they became common. Its software "robots" could answer questions on a website, guide shoppers, or search for information on a user's behalf. The ideas drew on research in artificial intelligence and software agents. The company was small and based in Boston, and its founder had roots in German AI research. It went public in December 1998, as interest in the web was surging.

Bots for Every Website

Eberhard Schoneburg founded the company. The bet was that websites would need intelligent assistants for their visitors, and that companies would license software agents to provide them. Artificial Life built bots for customer service, shopping, and information retrieval. The technology was early. Its products were limited by what software of the day could understand. They were early steps toward the chatbots and virtual assistants that later became common.

From Boston to Hong Kong

Artificial Life priced its offering at $8.50 a share in December 1998. Its stock began trading on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market on December 18, under the symbol ALIF. The company never grew large, and the dot-com crash hit it hard. It later moved its base to Hong Kong and turned to mobile games and applications. In its later years, its shares traded on the over-the-counter market.

Cover: Large wind-up automaton of Asahina Saburo, Utagawa Sadahide. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a wind-up automaton (artificial life).