OK, it’s not really linked to graphic design but the geek side of me made me write about this. Especially as the website I link to uses the Sitepal technology I’ve already spoken about in order to look more realistic. A new phenomenon is in birth, chatterbots. What are they? Programs behaving like human beings who would be using instant messaging, like MSN. And it’s spreading up very quickly, as there is programming language created especially for creating them. You write a sentence, and it answers to it, respecting a certain logic. Up to some extent they are able to analyze your previous sentences, to seem the most human possible. Of course it’s still programming, not real intelligence. They often pack a load of nonsense. And it’s not really useful at this stage, more of a curiosity. This technology becomes especially impressive used in conjunction with Sitepal, it makes an avatar speak.
Of course it hasn’t been invented just to satisfy curiosity, this kind of system can be used for interactive help systems, able to open a webpage based on the question you asked, to do some search in Google (or other search engines) to look for information…
Chatterbot ALICE’s website