Chatbots

Just as people use language for human communication, people want to use their language to communicate with computers. This led to the discovery of chatbots. Chatbots are computer programs that interact with users using natural language. They are also known as: machine conversation system, virtual agent, dialogue system or chatterbot. Chatbot architecture integrates a language model and computational algorithms. Let's have a look on the different chatbot systems:

• ALICE chatbot system( Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity):Alice’s knowledge about English conversation patterns is stored in AIML(Artificial Intelligence Markup Language) files. AIML consists of data objects called AIML objects. AIML objects are made up of units called topics and categories. The topic is an optional top-level element. It has a name and a set of categories related to that topic. Categories are the basic unit of knowledge in AIML. ALICE does not save the history of conversation.
• Pandorabot chatbots: Pandorabots is a web service for building and deploying chatbots. Earlier in the development phase Pandorabot chatbots were text-only. But, now some Pandorabot chatbots incorporate speech synthesis.
• ELIZA: The first attempt to build chatbot as a tool of entertainment is ELIZA. Here the responses are mainly generated from user input.
• Sofia: This chatbot was used in Harward Mathematics Department to assist in teaching Mathematics.
• YPA: Yellow pages contain advertisements, with the advertiser name, and contact information. YPA is a natural language dialogue system that allows users to retrieve information from British Telecom’s Yellow pages.
• Virtual Patient bot (VPbot): VPbot simulates a patient that medical students can interview.It was successfully tested in Harvard Medical School’s virtual patient program.
• Happy Assistant: It helps users access e-commerce sites to find relevant information about products and services.
• Sanelma: It is a fictional person to talk with in a museum, which provides background information concerning a certain piece of art.
• RITA(Real time Internet Technical Assistant): It is a graphical avatar used in ABN AMRO Bank to help customer for doing financial tasks.

Source: http://media.dwds.de/jlcl/2007_Heft1/Bayan_Abu-Shawar_and_Eric_Atwell.pdf

Live to learn and you will really learn to live!