The origin of the term "botsourcing" is unclear, but a 2004 issue of IEEE Spectrum used the term in an article entitled "From outsourcing to botsourcing"[1] in the context of using bots, or robots, to accomplish otherwise human tasks. Of particular interest to the authors were the new Sony robots, capable of rather complex physical motion.

Botsourcing, a neologism, involves the assignment of tasks to an automated, or intelligent, programmed agent - or bot. Consistent with outsourcing, or crowdsourcing, botsourcing reflects the choice made by an organization to assign tasks traditionally performed by individuals within the organization, to entities outside the organization. However, the term can also refer to the performance, by a bot, of tasks within an organization, usually performed by human agents. A neologism is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (coined) — often to apply to new concepts, or to reshape older terms in newer language form. ... Bot may refer to: Internet bot: a type of computer program Larval Bot Kill Bot Bot, Tarragona: a small municipality in the comarca (county) of Terra Alta, Tarragona province, Catalonia, Spain video game Bot, see Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, small, bloblike creatures that jump about and have no... Paper shredding can be contracted out Outsourcing (or contracting out) is often defined as the delegation of non-core operations or jobs from internal production within a business to an external entity (such as a subcontractor) that specializes in that operation. ... Crowdsourcing is a term coined by Wired magazine writer Jeff Howe and editor Mark Robinson. ...

Examples of possible botsourcing include Internet Bots like the GoogleBot, Game Bots in multi-player games, Chatterbots in customer service, Shop Bots for price comparisons, ratings and purchases, Robots for physical tasks, or other software/hardware based agents. Recently, a number of trading firms replaced fund managers with sophisticated trading bots. A bot is common parlance on the Internet for a software program that is a software agent. ... A chatterbot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods. ... Robots is a computer-animated movie released March 11, 2005. ...