The Turing Test was created to see if a computer or machine could pass itself off as a human. It was created by Alan Turing, a computer pioneer who was way ahead of his time.
The Turing Test was based off of a popular party game of the time called The Imitation Game, where players go into separate rooms and try to pass themselves off as the other player. Only in the Turing Test, one of the players is a machine.
It's often referred to when talking about artificial intelligence and machine consciousness, though in its classic form, it's not meant to determine intelligence or consciousness, but only if it could imitate human intelligence.
Today, robots like Sophia from Hanson Robotics, chat bots like ELIZA, and Twitter bots have the ability to fool people into thinking they're real. What implications this has for the world in a time when most people get their news from social media is concerning.