Replika is a chatbot that creates a digital representation of you. It's strange and fascinating -- but the story behind it is even better.
Link to video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQGqMVuAk04
I remember back in the early 00's when ALICE was the newest bot on the market. You couldn't really call her an AI; her mind was a spreadsheet, and when the bot said something wrong, you could put in the correct response either by verbal command or editing the cell. Still, the program was good at picking up things you said, remembering details, and bringing them up later.
I also played around with the NIALL brain, which will parrot what you say, learn the grammar rules of the words you tell it, and then try to form sentences back at you. I still have that one in another game and will whip it out whenever I want to run a few experiments on it. One day I fed it nothing but Shel Silverstein poetry, then I followed up with some cutesy talk about pancakes, parakeets, and ice cream. It was a puffy little cloud of a personality until my friends came along and bombarded the brain with Warhammer talk. Then it began to talk about burning pancakes and scorching the earth.
One day I'm going to take a fresh NIALL brain, read a bunch of Pitchfork reviews to it, then let talk back to me. Should be hilarious by the time I'm done.
