Vintage Artificial Intelligence: Before It Got Awkward

Artificial intelligence has long been a pervasive theme in creative and engineering works, influencing storytelling and design for generations. An early commercial chatbot, Racter (short for Raconteur), released in 1985, was designed to write authentic-sounding sentences and stories, even producing published short works. This program offered an eerie conversational experience, prompting early speculation about its ramifications, which now seem understated compared to modern AI advancements.