UKOLN is supported by:

1. Brian the Brain: IWMW's very own Chatbot Marieke Guy Interoperability Focus m.guy@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN is supported by:

2. Why a Chatbot? • Something new and innovative for IWMW • Not currently used in the education sector or e-learning • Interested in finding out more about: • How Chatbots work • Accessibility issues • How people actually use chatbots • What their potential is for our community • If Chatbots can learn from users (AI)

3. Initial Chatbot Specification • Discussed the IWMW specification with Dadenlimited • Supplied Dadenlimited with some data to initially populate the chatbot with: • A list of possible questions for Brian to answer(Who, Why, What, When, Where, Which, How, Is?) • A list of Bath related rss feeds and Web sites • Dadenlimited set up an avatar account (Sitepal with oddcast)

4. Building Brian • Ther oddcast account allows users to design characters using the clothing and colouring tools available • Can change their eyes, hair, mouth, skin, make up, width and breadth of features and clothes (hats, glasses, jewellery etc.) • Once a character is created you can edit scenes using the character library, audio library and background library • Can even control movement of eyes • System is fairly intuitive

8. Brian’s Brain • Once Brian (the character) was created he was connected to the chatbot engine • Given access to the Brian bot manager, supplied with documentation and allowed to edit and build cases • Cases were supplied for small talk, personality or core • They use either patterns, AIML or keywords • AIML uses triples (similar to RDF) – subject, predicate and object e.g Marieke is giving this presentation • From the manager you can edit your character, edit config files and view the log files (IP address, time/date of conversation)

9. Next Steps • Intensive user testing – UKOLN staff • Edited use cases • Use of the random tag • Released into the community • More editing of use cases, monitoring of log files • Spelling issues, phrasing issues • Further evaluation

10. Fun with Log files #1 • User: Can I have a bath in bath? Brian: I'll have a think about that and get back to you. • User: What about Web 2.0 then eh?Brian: Web 2.0 is very big this year at the institutional web management workshop! we have several plenaries on this topic as well as a panel session and parallel sessionUser: Do not you think its all a load of hype? • User: Do you like Marieke? Brian: Not bothered.

11. Fun with Log files #2 • User: How old are youBrian: Twenty fiveUser: Liar Brian: Liar ? User: You look older than 25 Brian: Thank you. • User: Are you real?Brian: Depends what you mean by real. • User: You are American.Brian: Thank you.User: It wasn’t necessarily a compliment.

12. Fun with Log files #3 • User: Who are you?Brian: Marieke is my owner and bot master. User: Is Marieke nice to you?Brian: MaybeUser: Are you nice to her?Brian: Yes, I think so. • User: Do you like having a beard Brian: Having a beard? • User: Who will win the 2:30 at Chepstow?Brian: Sorry I don't know.

13. Chatting with Brian • http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2006/chatbot/ - IWMW page on Chatbots • Flash needed - http://www.daden.co.uk/chatbots/livebots/brian/ - Brian the Brain • http://www.daden.co.uk/cgi-bin/chatbot/chatbot.pl?api=init&op=chtml&bot=brian – Text only version

14. Final Thoughts • Potential with learners - Emile project • Improving presentations - interaction, different perspective • Something gimicky on your Web site - new, first HE adopters • Cost • Does it engage users? • Jabberwacky - learning from users is the way forward • NLP issues, similar to machine translation etc. Can work within very tight boundaries - Ikea Chatbot • No doubt that research in this area will carry on

15. Any Questions?