Researchers have revived ELIZA, the world’s first chatbot, using its original code found in MIT archives after nearly 60 years. Developed by Professor Joseph Weizenbaum, ELIZA was an early AI program designed to simulate a psychotherapist, responding to users with simple prompts like, “In what way?” Long believed lost, the chatbot's original code, written in the obsolete MAD-SLIP programming language, was rediscovered in 2021 by researchers at MIT and Stanford. After painstaking debugging and creating an emulator to mimic 1960s computers, the team successfully ran ELIZA on December 21, marking its first operation in nearly 60 years. Beyond being a technical milestone, the revival of ELIZA underscores the importance of preserving AI history. This chatbot laid the foundation for today’s conversational AI, influencing everything from Siri to ChatGPT. Researchers hope this project will inspire future generations to recognize and archive early digital innovations as part of our cultural heritage. With ELIZA’s return, the world gets a rare glimpse into the origins of AI and the vision of one of its earliest pioneers. Learn more: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06707