Bot News
GuruBot

By Brian Proffitt

GuruBot is the newest creation coming out of DarkFame Productions, and it is one of the faster-learning chat bots around.

Until very recently, GuruBot did not even have a name, and was just referred to as the "Simple AI Chat Program." But the rapid development of this chat bot would not let that situation remain in place for long.

DarkFame is operated by 19-year old Norwegian Helge Ingvoldstad, who actually has created two chat bots, GuruBot and its Spanish-speaking sibling Spanishbrain. Both bots appear to be written Borland's Delphi 5, not a common choice for developing AI applications.

Still, the work Ingvoldstad has done seems to have paid off. After downloading GuruBot, I got a nice, self-contained executable and a "brain file," which is what GuruBot calls its knowledge database.

GuruBot takes a very reflective approach to learning, especially during the first few instances you use it. If you ask it a question, it will reflect that question back at you. Answering it, even if it seems tedious, will give the bot more information to work with. It even acknowledges when it has learned something.

GuruBot, which is officially in beta, is a nice bot to train and users are invited to downloaded for themselves.