Joseph Weizenbaum

1923–2008

MIT computer scientist who created ELIZA in 1966, an early natural-language chatbot.

Weizenbaum built ELIZA at MIT to mimic a Rogerian therapist through simple pattern matching. The program surprised users with how conversational it felt and became an early symbol of the chatbot era.

Portrait of Joseph Weizenbaum — Image credit Rochester Institute of Technology · License: Public domain · Source