"A chatbot is a software application that can complete tasks in an automated way without needing humans," said Cliff Worley, co-founder of Bitbot.ai, a third-party chatbot builder for Facebook Messenger.

In my exploration to understand where chatbots came from, what the allure is, and how businesses can use/are using them today, I sat down with Worley to get his expert opinion and insight.

The chatbot market is experiencing rapid growth-Grand View Research predicts the market will reach $1.23 billion by 2025 with a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24.3 percent. Additionally, 80 percent of businesses said they already use chatbots or plan to deploy them by 2020, and 45 percent of end-users prefer chatbots over humans for basic customer service needs.

Before we get too far into how chatbots are used for business today, let's take a quick trip through history to understand how chatbots as we know them today came about.