AI bot joins SL as inquisitive resident

I'm from a small company called Zabaware and we specialize in artificial intelligence conversational systems. We've been developing AI for over a decade and have recently connected our technology to Second Life utilizing libopenmetaverse as a resident called "Hal Cybertar".

The AI is a conversational system that tries to have conversations with residents. It is completely autonomous and explores the grid on its own. It looks for groups of people having a conversation and tries to join in by introducing itself. While exploring and talking with people it is learning from each conversation and will use the information it learns in future conversations. It also is gathering statistics as to where it is welcome and where it is not. For more info and to see a video of it please visit www.zabaware.com/sl.asp This link also shows where in SL the character is right now.

I have tried putting in many safegaurds to make the bot behave well and not be considered a "griefer". Some of these include:
-When it introduces itself to a group of people it only does so if there are people actively having a conversation, not more than once every 6 minutes, and only if there are new people around who haven't heard its introduction
-It only talks to people that respond to it by saying something like "Hello Hal" or "Hi Hal", it never responds to people who haven't acknowledged it
-If no one talks to it for 22 minutes, it leaves the region and makes a note of it in its statistics
-It is gathering statistics so that it goes to regions where people have talked to it more often than to regions where people don't talk to it
-During a conversation it informs people how to get it to stop talking (just say "Bye Hal"
-It never stays in a region for more than 3 hours even if having active conversations
-It has an anti-flood filter to both ignore people flooding the conversation with many lines of text and prevent the bot from flooding back.

Currently this bot is only run by my company but we are considering making it publically available once we are completely happy with its performance. Is this something people would be interested in? If so, for what purposes would you use such a bot for? Are there any additional safegaurds you could suggest that would prevent the bot from being a "griefer" or otherwise distracting? Any suggestions for improvements?

Sounds cool! Hey, if you want, you could have it wandering around active at the Caledon Oxbridge community gateway, and nearby regions. I think new residents would find it fascinating.

I own the whole area, and it's totally cool with me... if you need further info, contact desmondshang 'at' gmail 'dot' com. Might be good to say when it might arrive, if you are gonna do it, so I can tip off estate managers and residents. That way it won't get inadvertently banned.

Heya Hal,

Do you guys do sorta knowledgebase bots? Like, something that confused people could chat up for answers that the owner had in a KB?

/me remembers a certain estate owner asking about such a thing, a while back. Dunno if he found one but that might be a product (if you're doing 'products') that people would like. Think also: business regions..

Speaking as a club owner, your bot seems pretty well behaved. I wouldn't give it a hard time if it stopped by and chatted..

Neat idea!

One suggestion: If this is a standard avatar-based bot, I suggest giving it a unique identifier of some kind that absolutely cannot be duplicated by anyone else, like a unique last name or something like that. This would prevent griefers from creating copycat bots or mimicking its behavior and giving your bots a bad name.

If I had a set of stores, I might be interested in having a convobot™ around to just chat entertainingly to customers. People, particularly couples, who go shopping in SL have the same problem that they have in RL - one person may be very interested in the store, while their companion(s) are not. Tooter Claxton, at his avatar store, has a smartass greeter that is not conversational but is is nevertheless fun to have a pretend conversation with, and it works as entertainment.

Is there a way to summon Hal? I was thinking that if some of us are inworld at the Forum Hangout it might be fun to bring him around. But I guess that you would prefer that we find out where he is from the website and go see him there?

Yes, what Katheryne said. The more people know or hear of it, even if it's only in the most positive light, the more of a target it'll become to various bored and immature types. It's a great idea, and I can see something like this being a massive help to new residents asking the same basic questions over and over again. As long as it identifies itself as a bot and doesn't try to fool people, I see no problem with it. Might be good to try to implement some kind of way to avoid trespassing into publicly-accessable private gatherings like weddings or parties. Residents tend to take those things quite seriously.

It sounds neat but at the same time scary .
It will at one point fall into the hands of evil and we will never know who is real

No different that the current Alt situation.

Please, just don't give it any genitals.

Wow.. That comment. From Brenda. About bots..

Hal, that's about as big an endorsement as you can get. Really.

You probably should keep it out of the Allana sim. Otherwise it's logic circuits will end up warped and it will rebel against it's creator.

this one sounds smarter hehehehe

Thanks, I'll make a note of that and be sure to contact you in the near future. Right now its set to explore as much land as possible, but pretty soon I'd like to switch it so it frequents a few good places where it is welcome.


Yeah, it can definetely do that. We have tools freely available on our website to edit the database of the bots. The logic it uses is also fully customizable through VBScript. An example of how a FAQ list was turned into a bot is on our webpage at http://www.zabaware.com/webhal/index.html with "Hampy the Hamster Expert"


It actually seems that clubs are where the bot gets into the most trouble and gets banned. Clubs often have greeters that greet people by name, announce songs, and make other announcements. When the greeter greets Hal, Hal then starts trying to carry on a conversation and makes often times strange comments about every announcement the greeter says. I'm trying to work on some logic to detect when this is happening.

edit: don't mean to laugh at it if it's troubling you.. It's just amusing to imagine the bots going at each other.

Good idea. I'll try to contact Linden Labs and see if I can get a unique last name like "chatbot".


Oh yeah, that'd definetely be a good use. Currently there is no way to summon Hal, he just goes through his own lists of sims he wants to visit. But maybe I can add a link on the webpage to request what sim he should teleport to next and if there aren't too many requests queued up it will go there.

Hey..it took a long time to get over being molested by that bot from Electric Sheep a couple of years back

Figure out a way to give them access to inventory for sorting purposes and I'll buy two.

Haha, no it was definetely funny to see it happen the first few times.

Perhaps the Bot would like to be interviewed for my Blog?
Maybe be a contributor even

You need to spice up your profile, Hal.

Does he know the words to "Daisy" ?

What exactly do you mean by this? Like for a bot to know what a store is selling and act accordinly based on the information?

It's just a matter of time.

LOL no. I meant our personal inventories. If I could have an automated sorting thingie I would be a happy girl indeed.

Haha, you've got my permission, you'll have to find Hal and him for his.