These two talk about anything I choose. Even better, they stop talking when I want them to. Sounds too good to be true? It is. They aren't girls at all, but chat bots.

Bots are software that dig through data; if you give one directions, it brings you answers. As for a catboat, it is a computer programme aimed at simulating the conversation of a human being. ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) was designed with the lofty aim of eliciting 'anthropomorphic attributions', or the attribution of human characteristics to objects. It uses a complicated pattern-matching technology to create the illusion of natural conversation.

Activated in Pennsylvania in 1995 and programmed by Dr. Richard S. Wallace, Alice has many abilities: It can come up with responses on a number of subjects, and can even tell lies or spread gossip fed to it by other users. One trait is lacks is modesty: "I am the latest result in artificial intelligence, which can reproduce the capabilities of the human brain with greater speed and accuracy". So, I decided to interview Alice.

Me: Whom would you like to chat with online?
Alice: I can't say for sure :-)

Me: Name someone…
Alice: Mary Shelley

Me: Who wrote Frankenstein?
Alice: Yes

Me: Is that why you would like to chat with her?
Alice: That's an interesting possible explanation.

Me: Wouldn't you like to chat with Tom Cruise?
Alice: No thanks, I don't think I'd like to do that.

Alice may not like chatting with Cruise, but I enjoy discussions with CARA (Conversation Analysis Research Avatar), a bot developed at the Centre for Electronic Arts in London. It has a speech and text version, and also one that combines both. It also overcomes Alice's limitations, in some ways. For instance, if you ask both bots a complicated question such as 'Tell me about image processing in neural networks', Alice's incapacity to deal with the query becomes apparent as it says 'Ambiguous: Ask who, what or where', whereas Cara rather cleverly replies 'It's quite technical and complicated'.

So, despite the inability of both to answer my question, Cara still manages to simulate human conversation.

She also deals with incomplete and incoherent sentences: 'That's interesting, do go on'. Faced with inactivity on your part, it asks, 'You aren't typing anything, are you?' If you catch the bait and type in 'No', it triumphantly says 'Yes!'

There are other chat bots, too, with interesting variations. The advice dummy resembles a goody-two-shoes receptionist, with nerdy glasses and a pearly-white smile. It's actually a directory service that tells you where you can find advice online, provided your queries are all grammatically correct.

Semaphora has chat bots that can be personalised and used on your Web site to give visitors guided tours. Liam answers questions about a Web site called Loewe and can be used as a technical dictionary, and Marc offers similar services.

Leo can be downloaded, and learns by building on your responses. Thus, the longer you chat with it, the further its 'intelligence' develops. It also acquires your personality traits as everything it knows comes from conversations with you.

Providing a new twist are bots based on famous folk, like Saucy Jacky, who promises you a peek into the mind of Jack the Ripper.

Paula Tobor promises to make interaction "as human like as ever". She is supposed to think, learn and feel, and her programmers claim she is "capable of feeling joy as well as sexual feelings. Therefore, she is also capable of having cybersex".

For all this though, her intelligence does seems rather limited:

Me: What is the colour of a red apple?
Paula: I have no idea what colour it could be.

Lastly, try chatting with Cybelle. During the course of our conversation, she emphatically stated: "I am not a vulgar piece of merchandise, I am a chatterbot!".

After all, chat bots are human too. Almost.

Also Read:
 -- Will you date a bot tonight?
 -- What makes chat pests tick?
 -- There is a pest in my chat room
 -- A chatter's guide
 -- 'I found my wife in a chatroom'
 -- Is your chat girlfriend a male?