Okay most of us have seen the creepy fake 3d Flash based talking heads on websites that try and sell us something. Some have a blank text field with which to talk to them. These Stepford esk characters are often powered by a program called "Alice" (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) or others like Ultra Hal. These Chatbots or Chatterbots have been around for a long time though have never really caught on to the main stream. The good news is, you can have your very own semi retarded robot for free. No their not very smart, but that's where the fun begins. You get to train your bot, teach him the ways of human kind, or anything you want. Personally I started with the 3 laws of robotics, just to be on the safe side.

        Once you are a Bot Master, your Bot can learn just from talking to people as well as from you tinkering around with its brain. Programmers who want to delve even deeper into the inner most thoughts of their Chatterbots mind, may do so with a programming language called AIML. You can download Alice from some sites and run her locally, or you can sign up for a free account at anyone of these sites, which once created host your Bot online. If you teach your Chatbot well enough, you may want to enter it in the Loebner competition for artificial intelligence. Just cross your fingers and hope it doesn't get beaten up by those nasty Cobra Kai Bots.

        I am presently working on a couple Bots with the intention of making one of them the spokes person for ROBOHEART.

www.pandorabots.com

www.personalityforge.com

www.zabaware.com