My first steps with AIML and the opportunity of seeing Mitsuku — a three-time winner of the Loebner Prize Turing Test, live!
Back when I was a Computer Science student in Brazil, I had the opportunity to study chatbots in the artificial intelligence course at university; one of our assignments was to build one chatbot using AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language).
You can find below the simplified version of the chatterbot I built in which the user would ask what the best criminal movie was and at random we could pick 4 of the movies listed. It was my very first interaction with AIML and chatbots in general. I had to present it to the class and I used a simple interface.
<?xml version=”1.0" encoding=”UTF-8"?><aiml version=”1.0.1" encoding=”UTF-8"?><category> <pattern> Melhor filme de crime *</pattern> <template> <random> <li> Onze Homens e um Segredo </li> <li> Cidade de Deus </li> <li> Assalto ao Banco Central </li> <li> Inimigos Públicos </li> </random> </template></category></aiml>
It wasn’t anything exceptional but I had the chance to get started with chatbots and thanks to the simplicity of the declarative language used, I could see the flow of the conversation without having to bother about the intricacies of a proper algorithm. The ones we had as reference back then were Mitsuku.com, Alice, RebeccaAIML (C++, Java, .NET/C#, Python, Eclipse AIML editor plugin), Program D (Java, J2EE), ChatterBean (Java), Program R (Ruby), Program Q (C++), AIMLbot (Program #) (.NET/C#), Program W.
After I moved from Brazil to London, I was impressed with the many meetups and events I could attend here. I got the chance to fall in love with conversational apps all over again (you can read my experience here in English and here in Spanish).
The natural follow up to this passion of mine was to introduce it to as many people I could, first to my close friends and nowadays, with the opportunities available in London I started giving talks about the topic. I thought about letting others know about one of first inspirations:
In the beginning of February I noticed Mitsuku’s website was completely restyled and started to look super modern and up-to-date. They even changed how she looks like!
To my surprise I saw a tweet about Steve Worswick, the programmer of Mitsuku, speaking in London in a very central venue, just a 30-minute walk from my workplace and I was delighted! I cancelled all my plans for the evening and went to attend his talk!
The event was organised by Chatbots & Voice Assistants London, thanks for having us. I got the chance to chat with Steve a bit before the talks started, and say to him my kindest congratulations on his awesome work that inspires people in Brazil and all over the world!
After the three interesting talks it was finally time for Steve to go on stage, and seeing Mitsuku’s persona on screen made my heart feel warm!
He then proceeded to talk about her history, some of the language problems, the sort of things users talk about and I was intrigued to see how widely around the globe people are talking to Mitsuku.
As written on Pandora Bots website, Mitsuku is a three-time winner of the prestigious Loebner Prize Turing Test, and her codebase can be licensed, along with other modules, from Pandorabots and incorporated into other chatbot applications.
