Bot News
CoLIN

By Brian Proffitt

There's something kind of special when you talk to a child. They look at you with all the intent of the little learning machines they are, picking up new pieces of languages with every sentence you utter.

Then they run off and do the opposite of what you just told them.

A rebellious nature is not a part of the chat bot program called CoLIN, though it does have some very childlike qualities.

CoLIN, which stands for Computer Linguistic ImitatioN, is a chat bot that comes with no preset language phrases. Just a totally empty database and a simple interface for you to start training it.

Developed by Scottish developer Alan Brown, CoLIN is easy to install and simple to use, as most chat bots should be. During the initial phases of use, CoLIN will merely act as a parrot, repeating your words back to you.

After several sessions of use, CoLIN will start picking up some of your phraseology and begin to initiate more interesting lines of conversation.

CoLIN was made this way, Brown says on the CoLIN Web site, to give all users a chance to make use of it in whatever language they want.

If you have the patience, you should find CoLIN to be a quick learner in the ways of conversation. This is a nice bot to experiment with.