Al-Rafidain Engineering Journal (AREJ) Vol.27, No.2, September 2022,pp.178-189 Al-Rafidain Engineering Journal (AREJ) Vol.27, No.2, September 2022,pp.178-189 A Review of Arabic Intelligent Chatbots: Developments and Challenges Zena N. Abdulkader* Yousra Faisal Muhammad** zenatiq2@uomosul.edu.iq yusrafaisalcs@uomosul.edu.iq * Computer Science Departement, Collage of Education for Pure Sciences, University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq ** Computer Science Departement, Collage of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Mosul, Mosul, Iraq Received: 21/12/2021 Accepted: 16/3/2022 ABSTRACT Chatbots, or machine based conversational systems, have become popular in recent years in a variety of applications. Chatbots are intelligent technologies that employ Artificial Intelligence (AI) to converse with humans in their natural languages. Chatbot's primary function is to interpret user's questions and respond with the most convenient intelligent and natural responses. In a number of the world's most generally spoken languages, chatbots appear to be quite successful; however, Arabic chatbots have not yet attained the predicted degree of success. Many academics have recently sought to bridge the gap in the implementation of Arabic chatbots by overcoming the complicated linguistic Arabic language features. This survey reviews the chatbots, their categories and implementation techniques. It also, presents some challenges that face the developer of Arabic chatbots due to rich complex properties of Arabic language. Then, most of published chatbot researches that deal with Arabic language are highlighted. Finally, a table of comparison among the mentioned Arabic chatbots is presented. The study concludes that, all the present AI based Arabic chatbots are developed in retrieval mode, and that Arabic chatbot literature is scarce in comparison to that in many other languages. Keywords: Arabic chatbot; rule based chatbots; AI based chatbots; AIML, pattern matching; This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://rengj.mosuljournals.com =============== ===================================== =============================== 1. INTRODUCTION Modern life is not devoid of using artificial intelligence technologies due to the great improvements that aim to simulate the cognitive abilities of humans in this area [1]. One of the effective artificial intelligent technologies that have recently gained popularity is the chatbot [2]. A chatbot is a software agent that, when conversed via text or speech, reacts as if it were a smart entity that knows one or more human languages using Natural Language Processing (NLP) [3]. A chatbot is defined in the terminology as “A computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users, especially over the Internet” [4]. Terms such as smart bots, digital assistants, conversational agents, and interactive agents are all used to describe chatbots [3]. Due to dramatic improvements in artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies as neural networks, deep learning and natural language processing, chatbots became so popular in recent years [2]. They have served as helpful assistants in a variety of applications. Chatbots are excellent softwares for teaching, learning, and helping academia in education [5], [6], [7]. They can also be utilized in the medical field to counsel and support patients [8], [9], [10]. Chatbots have improved the e-commerce experience by acting as 24/7 customer service