How to Program an AIM Bot
AIM, America Online’s Instant Messenger, is one of several chat clients that allow the use of chat bots. These bots, despite their quick responses and sharp demeanor, are not products of complex artificial intelligence. Their seemingly clever replies are simply the work of their human programmers. You can even program your own AIM bot with the answers that you choose. Use your bot as a resourceful tool for your small business or as a casual prank on your friends.
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Instructions
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Create a new AOL Instant Messenger screen name for your AIM bot. Use “Bot” in the screen name to accurately represent your creation. Choose a name that suits the purpose of your bot, whether for work purposes or fun with friends.
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Choose a chat bot creation site that suits your needs. Create an account for future use to manage any bots you make on the site.
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Create your bot. Sync your bot’s account on the chat bot creation site with the AIM screen name made previously. Select a predesigned personality template as the basis for your bot, if available, or leave your bot a blank slate for an entirely personal creation.
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Define your bot’s responses to various user inputs. Account for all the ways you can imagine to ask a particular question. Program a customer service AIM bot to respond to “when” and “what time” with equal amounts of information.
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Use key words and phrases as triggers for replies rather than entire statements. For example, instead of waiting for the input, “What is your name?” to have your AIM bot tell the user its name, use the word “name” as a keyword to prompt the phrase, “My name is SmartBot.” The answer will be the same whether the user asks for the bot’s name or tells the bot her own name as long as the keyword is used.
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Incorporate wildcards into your programming to represent user input in a particular place. Have your bot respond generically to them, such as saying “me too” when a user describes his mood with a wildcard, or use them to identify and repeat certain words the user enters. Have the bot ask what the user thought of a particular movie. When he says it was boring, exciting or any other adjective, your bot can answer, “I also thought it was” and fill in the rest with the wildcard.
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Program several random answer groups into your AIM bot’s responses. Have these be triggered by keywords, like all its responses, but offer several choices instead of a single reply. Make your bot less predictable and more lifelike by randomly varying “Hi,” “Hey” and “Hi there” in response to users’ greetings.
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Program your bot as extensively as you can. Create several default responses for the areas you are not able to cover in your programming so that your AIM bot seems more realistic. Alternate between “Sorry, I don’t understand” and “I’m not sure I understand. Could you try asking a different way?”
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Tips & Warnings
Paid bot creation accounts may offer greater customization options than their free counterparts.
References
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