The Challenges of Using Arabic Chatbot in Saudi Universities

Nowadays, machine-based conversational systems known as chatbots have emerged for many applications in our lives Chatbots are intelligent tools that use the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in order to communicate with humans using their natural languages The inherent role of chatbots is to understand users’ questions and provide the most appropriate responses intelligently and naturally Chatbots have been very successful in some of the most spoken languages;however, Arabic chatbots have not reached the expected level Recently, many researchers have attempted to fill the gap in implementing Arabic chatbots trying to overcome the complex linguistic features of Arabic language Although Arabic chatbots can be utilized as a supportive tool for Saudi university students, their implementation, especially in Arabic language, is surprisingly neglected Moreover, during changing the mode of education into distance learning due to (COVID-19) pandemic, it did not help the emergence of Arabic chatbots in Saudi universities This research focuses on language-related challenges and obstacles that hinder the implementation of Arabic chatbots Additionally, this paper presents fundamental recommendations for implementing effective Arabic chatbots for academic uses In summary, it is noticed that Arabic chatbots literature suffers from paucity, which means further studies are needed in this area © 2021, IAENG International Journal of Computer Science All Rights Reserved