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Friday, May 22, 2015

What is a chatbot, chatterbot, virtual agent, Twitterbot, knowledge bot, and AI bot?

A chat bot, or chatbot is a software program that responds to questions in natural language (such as English, French, etc.).

Chat bots can be used for many purposes.  Chat bots can be used for a business to help users, provider customer service, or promote a product. Chat bots can be used for fun, as a friend to chat with, even a girlfriend or boyfriend.  Chats bot can also be used for research, knowledge and education.

There are many different types of chat bots, such as:

Most chat bots are now web based, but there are also chat bots that run on IRC, Twitter, email, Facebook, Skype, ICQ, IM, Second Life, and a growing number of Android, iOS and mobile chat bots.

BOT libre's goal is to support chat bots running on as many different services as we can support.  We currently support connecting your bot to the web, Twitter, email, IRC, Android, mobile and other platforms through our apps, API and SDK.

Chat bots can be developed using many different techniques and programming models.

Some common techniques include:

  • Question/response matching
  • Keyword and topic matching
  • Sequential scripting
  • Text search and processing (such as AIML)
  • Language parsing and state machines (such as Self)
  • Direct programming (PHP, Java, LISP)
  • Machine learning (artificial intelligence)

BOT libre understands that no single method or technique is best for all types of bots, or all types of situation.  BOT libre provides a heterogeneous environment of different techniques including, automatic question/responses matching, keyword and topic matching, AIML, Self scripting, and machine learning and comprehension.

What is a Vitual Agent?

A virtual agent is a term typically used to describe a type of chat bot used for business.

A virtual agent could be a virtual sales agent, a virtual customer service agent, or other type of virtual agent.  It is basically a automated version of a typical human employee and attempts to perform the same functions.

There are many virtual agents on many different websites on the Internet.  They offer help with their websites, give information about their companies products or services, answer users questions, provide support and customer service.

The BOT libre Help Bot is a virtual agent, also the Paphus bot for Paphus Solutions.

Virtual agents are typically animated, and have TTS (text to speech), but are also commonly text based.

Virtual agents are commonly used with a website live chat, to provide customer service when no human agents are available, or are too busy.

You can create your own virtual agent for your website or business for free on BOT libre.  BOT libre provides many tools that help make it easy for you to developing a virtual agent, and embed in on your own website.

You can train your agent by importing your FAQs on your business, and the bot will automatically select the best answer for a users question, without any programming required.  You can also enter keywords, and topics to improve the bots matching, and use our powerful Chat Logs feature to review your bot's conversions and correct any responses it got wrong.  You can also script or program your bot using AIML or Self.

BOT libre also provides integrated live chat, so you can add live chat to your website (for free), and let your bot provide service when your human agents are not available.  You can even configure your bot to automatically learn from your human agents.

We can also create your virtual agent for you, and customize your live chat to suite your needs through our commercial service Paphus Live Chat, starting at just 99 cents per month.

What is a chatterbot?

chatterbot is another synonym for a chat bot, typically used to describe a bot that just likes to talk and has no other purpose.  Chatterbots are normally designed to carry on a conversation and are typically trained to respond to common conversational topics.

BOT libre hosts many different chatterbots.

Some of our demonstration chatterbot include:

We also have an ALICE, and ELIZA clone,

What is a knowledge bot?

knowledge bot is a bot that attempts to answer questions about general facts, or a specific domain.

Types of knowledge bots include:

  • search bots
  • math bots
  • medical bots
  • law bots
  • answer bots
  • stock bots

To some degree Google is a knowledge bot, in that for some simple questions like "who is the us president", instead of performing a search (or in addition) Google will just give you the answer.  Google can also answer math questions and other facts. Wolfram Alpha is another knowledge bot that can answer math and other types of questions.

BOT libre provides a rich platform for building knowledge bots.  Every bot on BOT libre has its own database of interconnected knowledge.  The bot's knowledge can be arbitrarily complex and describe any knowledge and any relationship between any knowledge.  BOT libre can import knowledge from Freebase, which contains over 47 million knowledge artifacts.  You can access and use your bot's knowledge using the Self scripting language.

There are many knowledge bots on BOT libre, our most famous knowledge bot is Brain Bot.

What is a Twitterbot?

A Twitterbot is a bot that automates a Twitter account. Twitter bots can post Tweets, retweet posts, reply to mentions or other tweets, and reply to direct messages.

There are many bots on Twitter, used for customer service, marketing, information, and fun.

BOT libre makes it easy to create a Twitterbot and auto a Twitter account. You can connect your bot to your Twitter account from your bot's Twitter page under Admin.

Twitterbots can:

  • Reply to direct messages and mentions
  • Search tweets targeted by keyword and reply or retweet
  • Review and reply or retweet friend's tweets
  • Tweet an RSS feed
  • Auto tweet

BOT libre has a dedicated Twitterbot server at, http://twitter.botlibre.com/

What is an AI bot?

An Artificial Intelligence or AI bot is one that is attempting to be an intelligent entity.

AI bots have been made famous by movies and include such bots as:
  • HAL
  • Skynet
  • WOPR
  • Ultron
  • Jarvis

There are many AI bots on the Internet, but none that have achieved the level of intelligence given to them in the movies.

BOT libre's AI engine is designed for strong artificial intelligence. BOT libre bots are not simple scripts, or text search and processing programs. Each bot has its own knowledgebase of interconnected information that it can extend and manipulate. If enabled, bots can learn from their chat interactions and make inferences.

BOT libre's Self scripting language allows language to be parsed and understood. Bot's have a concept of emotions, and a conscious state. Bots can perform complex mathematics, lookup information on the Internet and use knowledge graphs in processing language.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Support BOT libre on Kickstarter - "free open artificial intelligence for everyone"

We live at the dawn of the age of artificial intelligence. The artificial intelligence technology revolution will be bigger than the Internet and mobile technology revolutions combined. We believe artificial intelligence technology should be for everyone and owned by no one.

The Plan

Help us make,

"free open artificial intelligence for everyone"

We have been developing our BOT libre AI platform since 2013, and it is based on open source technology that was started in 2008.

Our goal with this campaign is to raise enough funds to allow us to open source our technology and web platform under a non-profit organization to pursue the development of strong artificial intelligence.

We plan to apply the Wikipedia model to an artificial intelligence platform. Instead of making all of the world's information free and open, we plan to make all of the world's knowledge and intelligence free and open.

Where we are today

Currently we have a web based AI platform that lets anyone create their own bot that can interact with people through chat, twitter, email, and IRC.

www.botlibre.com

We also have a web API, open source Android and JavaScript SDK, an Android app, and are working on an iOS app.

play.google.com/botlibre

Our platform is not a simple chat platform, each bot has its own brain stored in it own database on its server. The bot has complex interconnected knowledge and can add and change its knowledge, or import knowledge from the web. The bots can currently understand simple phrases, complex math, make inferences, self program, learn new responses, and emote emotions.

Create Bots with a Real Brain

We are just getting started, and our end goal is intelligence that is equal or greater than that of a human. We are looking for crowd funding help to keep our platform open, and continue our development.

Support us on Kickstarter,

www.kickstarter.com/projects/paphus/bot-libre