This website sort-of wins this week’s Weird Website of the Week award, although to be fair it is because of the AI it provides. And actually, it is one of the most impressive AI systems I’ve ever used.
a-i.com offers three chatbots to waste your time with: Alan (named after Alan Turing), HAL, and the MyBot, which allows you to create a private personality. A bit like using a virtual server on a web-hosting service. All three are free to talk to and use, and I am particularly impressed. Alan holds his (its?) own in a conversation, as does the MyBot. A new HAL is very difficult to get to usable conversation, but talking to pre-developed HALs is quite good.
I do like the MyBot. It allows you to create a bot you can talk to over the Internet, or via Windows Live Messenger. Being on a Mac, I chose the remotely-hosted web option. I’ve published a transcript of the conversation below.
