[DemonRaven]

http://www.artificial-solutions.com/2015/elbot-the-cheeky-chatbot-that-never-gives-a-straight-answer-goes-mobile/

Born’ in 2001, Elbot has won awards for his artificial intelligence and was crowned ‘King of AI’ for fooling people into thinking they were talking to another person, while still claiming to be a robot. However, despite his rather cheeky and slightly argumentative demeanour, he was never designed to be thought of as human. In fact, Artificial Solutions believes that interaction using natural language can deliver more accurate results if the person realises they are talking to a machine.

While some chatbots such as Xiaoice offer a sympathetic response to a user’s plight, Elbot is still trying to comprehend the human way of life. It’s frustrating for him and sometimes he is not as polite as one might expect a robot to be. He does like to learn things and to improve his language skills though, and can even tell you about his favourite movies and TV shows. But be warned. This is no ordinary chatbot.

“Knowing that they are talking to a machine induces users to behave in a predictable manner, which can make it easier to guide conversations while still allowing the user to believe they are in control,” says Fred Roberts, Knowledge Engineer at Artificial Solutions and creator of Elbot. “For example, Elbot will often give a wrong answer to a simple question, one that users’ perceive a robot should know the answer to – just try asking him what is two plus four. This psychological technique enables him to engage the user in a long conversation.”

However, this doesn’t mean the human-machine conversations should be simple. Research shows that a powerful conversational ability encourages users to converse with machine interfaces in a much more natural way. One of the key elements to this is sentiment, which can be conveyed in dialogue as well as visually. Whilst Elbot remains endearingly ‘retro’ in his looks, he has a vast emotional repertoire represented by over forty different images. In addition, he can take cues from the person talking to him too and alter his response set to suit the circumstances.