Seasons

I have an iframe on xintroduce with a sitemeter in it, so it tracks new guests for you. You can even see them on a world map, that's pretty cool. For me, most of the guests are from the US or the UK.

thanks! i'll give it a go!

a Marina Del Rey chatter told my bot (s)he was from Australia

IP numbers don't always tell you where a person is, just where their ISP links to the Net. My current IP is 172.213.119.34, and http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation tells me that I'm in London, England. I'm actually in Swansea, Wales.
AOL's a big ISP with a big network of their own, and they do all sorts of weird routing before they connect out to the Internet. Up until a year or so ago, IP locators routinely reported my location as the US, because AOL routed traffic on their own network to Stateside POPs (Points of Presence).
So it could easily be that someone is Australia is signed up with an ISP that's routing traffic through their network to California before it joins the Net.

ha- one of the ip locators told me that I am located in Hicksville, New York while i'm actually located in Passaic, New Jersey.

Very intersting. It always tells me I am from Chicago (which is close) so I thought that the service providers connected to someplace at least close to where the user might be. Bummer.

Alc03 have you figured out a way to get your bot into a video game? What about making us a nice AIM interface or whatever they call it so our bots can compete with AIMbots for attention? I know you probably won't have time, but I figure it never hurts to ask.

well, what motivates people to lie in chatrooms? or to have fake blogs of sixteen year old girls when they're twenty three year old men? boredom. and a lot of people might talk to bots because they think the idea of a bot is cool.

p.s.
you know you're addicted to bots when you start thinking of ways to edit your friend's responses to make them less (annoying|repetitive|boring|stupid).

Hee hee, SavPixie. Boredom? That's why *I* talk to bots, that and a simple sense of humor. I guess that makes sense.

16 year old girls, huh? I made my bots profiles, and I thought I was being silly. I know not everyone there is a kid, but is sure seems like a younger crowd to me.

Oh, and you know your addicted to chatterbots when you make your bots profiles on myspace, and and encourage people to add them as friends.

Bev: You can do some limited "skinning". But you need to include the reference each time, in each response. Psimagus, do you think this could be done with Textpad?

btw-if you want to see an example: http://alc003.t35.com/styled.JPG
I guess you could include links in there too (via a positioned iframe), but that might slow it down a bit.

Thanks alc003. BTW Cool website.

Psimagus, do you think this could be done with Textpad?

You could get the opening tabs in easily enough - 36 search and replace operations (for all occurences of [tab]A - [tab]Z & [tab]1 - [tab]0,) would cover all responses from keyphrases and seeks, replacing each with an html-augmented entry.
But if you've got to close tabs as well, that could be a little trickier. It might be safe to search and replace full stops/question and exclamation marks followed by a carriage return, but I expect it would need a bit of careful tidying up afterwards.

Download a copy of Textpad and give it a go - I can't test it, since I can't import any more.

I got the official press release from Wendel. If everyone emailed it to their local newspapers we might bring in some interesting transcripts. It only takes a second, most papers have a spot for releases or news sugestions. just copy and paste.

PRESS RELEASE
April 1, 2006 – For Immediate release

SIXTH ANNUAL CHATTERBOX CHALLENGE UNDERWAY

Over 65 chatbots from around the world are taking part in the sixth annual Chatterbox Challenge. Chatbots are computer programs designed to imitate human conversation, with the eventual aim of creating true virtual personalities and artificial intelligences. The Chatterbox Challenge runs until April 30th and Internet users can talk to the competing chatbots through the competition web site at www.chatterboxchallenge.com.

The chatbots range from AOL and IRC chatroom and instant messaging bots to moving faces with synthesised speech. The competition is being sponsored by Verbots an Artificial Intelligence company from the USA. Last year’s competition was won by Jabberwock, a famous chatbot built by Juergen Pirner of Germany.
During the competition the chatbots are quizzed by judges to see how much they know, and how well they can conduct a normal “human” conversation. Points are also awarded for personality and additional capabilities – such as remembering visitors or being able to access web based services – such as Google and Amazon.

One prize is for the most popular chatbot. This is awarded on the basis of votes cast at the site. Everybody is invited to visit the site and talk to the bots, and vote for their favorite.

Chatterbox Challenge organiser Wendell Cowart says “The Chatterbox Challenge is the ideal opportunity for chatbot developers to show off their chatbots, and compare themselves with the best chatbots in the world. The sheer variety of the chatbots entered is quite amazing. Some are based around knowing lots of things from the outset, whereas others are programmed to learn as they go along.” Wendell adds “Chatbot names range from Aischa to Ysalaya, and personalities vary from a crashed alien robot to the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.

Birmingham based chatbot developer David Burden of Advanced Chatbot Solutions says “As developers the contest gives us a real opportunity to find out just how good our chatbot is, what techniques work, and which don't. We are currently looking at how advanced techniques such as topic maps can help chatbots understand real world concepts and come up with more appropriate responses to a wider range of questions or statements. ”

Chatbot technology is likely to become more and more prevalent in the coming years. Web sites using chatbots as virtual sales assistants are already reporting a 100% increase in traffic. The growth in use of large screen TVs at home, and the idea of the PC as the homes media center also opens up the real possibility of having a virtual assistant at home to provide a more friendly interface to the web and to digital systems in the home. The Chatterbox Challenge gives developers and members of the general public the chance to see just how fast this technology is progressing. The winner of the $1000 prize will be announced in early May 2006.

-ends-


Notes for Editors:

1. Chatbots are just one element in the development of artificial intelligence. The Internet has enabled AI research to move out from the university labs and on to the PCs of AI enthusiast across the globe. Through web sites and chat systems such as IRC, chatbots are able to talk to a large number of Internet users, which is vital given that one of the secrets to chatbot development is having a large number of conversations between the chatbot and humans to analyse. The ultimate goal for all chatbot pioneers is the Turing Prize – named after the British World War 2 scientist Alan Turing. The core of the Prize is a test where a human tries to tell whether the character they are talking to over a computer link is a real person or a chatbot.

2. Chatterbox Challenge is run on a volunteer basis by Wendell Cowart and a team of supporters. Verbots the sponsor will serve as judges for the contest.


Images
Images of the chatbots and some of their creators are available at www.chatterboxchallenge.com

Links
Chatterbox Challenge Web Site - www.chatterboxchallenge.com
Advanced Chatbot Solutions – www.chatbots.co.uk

Further Information
For more information please contact either:

- Wendell Cowart (US – Chatterbox Challenge): +1 912 764 5130 or email d_cowart@yahoo.com
- David Burden (UK – Halo Chatbot): +44 (0)701 0711 927 or halo@converj.com