I have been building DataBased forms and workflow using various Development Tools for most of the last 20 years. Prior to that I wrote computer programs and bit-twiddled compilers for another 15 years.  Now I am looking to move on to next BIG THING AI based conversational interfaces that provide direction and solutions to the simplest of users. 

I am currently working on an AIML generator (this seemed to be a logical place to start) but now I need an animated avatar to act as my access point.

I have several projects planned, on a few I could use a hosted chatbot service,
but I would REALLY prefer to use an open source royalty free solution that I can run on my and my customers webservers.

I would greatly appreciate any assistance this illustrious body can provide.

Enjoy,
Barry

Since you’re already working on an “AIML generator” (cool, btw), Program O would seem to be the fit for you; otherwise, I would say you are qualified to move ahead with ChatScript.  I’d love to hear more about your “AIML generator”.  Like, what can it do, and how does it do it??

There is no free, open source avatar system currently available on par with the defunct Haptek.  Robert Medeksza of Zabaware was working on an “Open Source 3D Character Engine”; but, I haven’t heard of any boots on the ground yet….  If you’re going ahead with AIML, I strongly suggest looking into the commercial Guile3d Denise avatar system.  SecondLife is also worth looking into as both an avatar system and prototyping environment.

Thanks Marcus.

The AIML generator is utilizes a SQL database to store, review, update and organize “questions” and “answers”, then
outputs AIML formatted file(s) for use by the chatbot.

We looked at some of the other options out there, found them to be lacking and decided to build our own.
We are debugging/testing now…but it is looking good.

I will research Chat script and Program O, but I was told that Alicebot was an open source avatar system that I needed to look at.  I take it from your response, this is not the case.

“Alicebot” is not an avatar system in any way, really. The term generally refers to a collection of AIML files that can be used as the starting point for an AIML chatbot (or even used “as-is”, for that matter). It’s also referred to as the ALICE AIML Set, and can be obtained in several places, but the best place to download it is at Google Code.

It should also be noted that ChatScript is not an AIML-based chatbot system. It uses it’s own architecture and language, and is not compatible with AIML at all. Program O, however, does use AIML, but it’s still in development, and has a few bugs that need to be addressed. I’m the lead developer of Program O, and I’m currently in England, where I’ve just met Elizabeth Perreau (the project creator/manager for Program O), and will be spending the next week here with her, performing bug fixes, and working on a new, expanded version of the project. Hopefully, we’ll have some exciting news regarding the project by the time I head back home on the 9th of April.

I’d also like to mention that I’ve got an “AIML Generator” of my own (located at http://www.geekcavecreations.com/aiml_tools/aiml_creator/ ), though it’s mainly intended to make the manual creation of AIML files a simpler task, and still lacks a few features. I haven’t yet perfected an “AIML Converter”, that will take a conversation transcript file and convert it into AIML. That’s still just a series of ideas at this point.