Hi all, just introducing myself. I’ve been a fan of chatbots for many years and have had a few goes at building one but always get put off by something. My main problem is deciding on the system to use. I *love* the PersonalityForge AI but feel very nervous about putting a lot of effort into a proprietary system I can’t host myself. Pandorabots has a lot going for it but I don’t really like AIML.

I’m still hoping to find the ideal combination of power, flexibility and openness. ChatScript looks interesting which is what has motivated me to sign up here.

We don’t get enough feedback here about PersonalityForge, especially in comparison with Pandorabots and AIML.  I’ve found ChatScript too onerous, too barebones for rapid development, and am still waiting for the SaaS version….  I was happy with Verbots / Verbotsonline, until their parent company Conversive Inc got acquired by Avaya, who then unceremoniously shut down Verbots.  Verbotsonline was easier to use than AIML, and had better cut and paste avatar with TTS than Pandorabots, for a cheaper price (based on usage).  There is no perfect solution yet.

For me PersonalityForge hits the sweet spot between ease of use and functionality. It’s very easy to set up a reasonably sophisticated conversational bot. The system has built in support for WordNet parsing, basic context sensitivity, template match priorities, etc. All things I miss when using AIML.

But at the end of the day it is a single site run by a single person with all that entails.

ChatScript looks to me like being somewhere between AIML and PF in terms of development speed, I’ll find out for sure when I’ve finished RTFM and start coding.

I would add an upvote for Chatscript based on the expressive power of the syntax; though as Marcus has said, it can appear a little daunting.