Chatbots In Flash

[pwilster]

For all of you that don't know what a chatbot is, the Free Online Dictionary of Computing says:

CHATBOT: <chat> (Or "chatterbot") A bot meant to be able to interact conversationally with humans. A chatbot is either an exercise in AI or merely as an interface, as in an infobot.

Great example of a Chatbot in flash can be seen at this site: http://aimovie.warnerbros.com/

The A.L.I.C.E. project (http://www.alicebot.org/) is, since 1995, the most ambitious and realistic chatbot ever made. Although it's coded in AIML there are some tweaks available that can make it work under Flash. I haven't investigated in full all about this ALICE program to work under Flash basically because ALICE is way too complex for what I could want a chatbot to do and it needs a series of external files in a server that make it impossible to run standalone.

There is a recent trend of using the so called "agents" in some interactive programs and websites (like Sitepal), I have done my part creating a virtual person who shows a series of menus and submenus as she babbles and moves like she is was actually talking. Obviously, there is no A.I. in my example because all you do is point and click a series of choices, so I would love to make my agent step a little further combining the job of showing choices from a menu with the more complete function of answering people's questions like "where are you located?" or "are you hiring?" or even more basic things like "what time is it?". I'm not big at actionscripting but I got the feeling something like this could be worked out totally in flash. Has anyone seen or done such a thing?, is anyone familiar with expert-systems? ...anyways, AI in flash has always been an interesting topic.

[Subway]

I never implemented a chaterbot (and I don't have any time right now), but if you did one ... just let me know and I will do a second version based on the first one.

Fredi

[Markp.com]

Yup I have seen chatbots in flash... they aren't very clever... well infact they are plain dumb... basically they read the input text string and take out key words they recognise.

It will then dish out a reply based on that key word or words... The site I saw it on was for a film site... I think its by the same people that made the Donnie Darko site... but I can't remember their name at the minute.

Anyway, they linked it up with some stills of a person on a laptop, so it looked as though you were talking to someone and they had a webcam on... Quite an interesting effect!