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A Look t Some of the Virtual Friends We’ve Made Over the Years

Virtual friends might seem like a relatively common thing, but they’ve actually been around longer than you think! In 1966, the first chatterbot – known as ELIZA – was invented by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum. Considering it was programmed using what we would regard today as primitive punch cards, it’s pretty impressive that you could interact with AI back then. Today we rely on AI-based “friends” for a lot of the things we do. Here’s a look at some of our favorite (or in some cases despised) virtual friends over the last 25 years.

Microsoft’s Clippy

It’s the mid-1990s and you’re busy typing an important essay for your English Composition class using Microsoft Word when a little animated paper clip would pop up and unhelpfully offer you “help.” His name was Clippy, and his job was to make your word processing experience as miserable as possible. More than anything, he was just an obstacle for finishing the paper. After 12 years, Microsoft finally sent him off to the sunset in 2007. However, if you miss him, you’ll be relieved to know that Clippy has been immortalized as an official emoji in Windows 11.