Edited by author 08-30-2000 12:11 PM
Let's talk about Alice here. The original topic was AOLiza.

Since Alice at the alicebot site is (probably temporarily) broken, I tried Diana Andreacchio's "Ally" version at http://www.accessterminal.com/L.html (linked from the alicebot site). Given how well Eliza works, Ally would be even more effective as the IM bot. But I wonder if having a more realistic conversation would make for less entertaining results -- part of what's funny and interesting is that people respond to such a poor simulation of a human.