What's a Bot? A Software Helper That Can Also Scare: QuickTake

Got bot? The news sometimes seems full of bots, often in alarming ways, from the bot-powered Russian trolls that invaded social media during the 2016 U.S. election to the software bug that briefly had Alexa, the voice-based virtual assistant of Amazon.com Inc.’s Echo home speakers, breaking out in random laughter.

It’s a computer program that executes automated tasks over the internet. Think of it as software’s version of the steel-and-cable robots that weld cars or assist surgeons.