The chatbot equivalent of clickbait: follow-up questions, unsolicited offers, and proactive DMs designed to keep users engaged rather than to help them. Where clickbait lures you into opening a link, chatbait lures you into giving up information. The term was coined after the release of GPT-5 by Lila Shroff in The Atlantic – and will almost certainly never be used again, which is fine.

Shroff, Lila (2025): Chatbait Is Taking Over the Internet