Iphone with artificial intelligence? Just ask Alice!

Apr 15, 2010

Pandorabots is an iPhone app that allows you to talk to real artificial intelligence (or bots as they are known) right on your iphone!

What is a bot you may well ask – well a bot is a virtual robot which exists online and has been programmed to respond to your questions. A.L.I.C.E is one of these bots.

A.L.I.C.E. stands for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity!

I have chatted to A.L.I.C.E. on my iphone and have to say it was an interesting experience.

However although we are now on first name terms she didnt strike me as that intelligent (sorry A.L.I.C.E.) but perhaps I was overtaxing her when asking her whether she enjoyed the film Bruno!

A.L.I.C.E. is free to use online (the app is about 99c) but commercial bots can cost thousands of dollars so this is a nice opportunity (Appertunity!) to play with this software.

That said the app could do with a face lift to make the interface more appealing and perhaps more of an explanation of it’s function as this isn’t immediatly clear unless you already know about AI and bots!

Features of Pandorabots iPhone app:

- Simple to use chat interface
- Multiple bots
- Includes A.L.I.C.E bot winner of the Loebner Prize competition

The Loebner Prize competition is an artificial intelligence competition or Turing test. Find out more HERE

You can also read more about the history of A.L.I.C.E. and even create your own bot personality online HERE

Dont expect to be discussing existentialism anytime soon! Pandora bots at App store HERE

You may think that all this is a little far fetched but one day your phone will have intelligence and may well even have a personality.

Already we have Siri – an intelligent app that has military grade AI that you can can speak to and that acts as a personal assistant.

Computer scientists Adam Cheyer, Dag Kittlaus and Tom Gruber are still working to bring advanced artificial intelligence to mobile devices. Their invention Siri can already scheduling appointments, buy movie tickets for you or making dinner reservations!

Watch the video below for more info:

Siri is free from the app store HERE but unfortunately not in UK app store yet but watch this space