Cleverbot

Rollo Carpenter’s Cleverbot is a chatterbot that interactively communicates with the user via text; it strikes up an entirely automated conversation. Cleverbot learns from its past conversations in order to add new words, phrases, and questions to its natural-language lexicon. Cleverbot is exceptionally crafty at extending conversations, asking numerous questions, and often self-reflecting in order to attempt to pass as a human. There are three main buttons with which the user can engage: “think about it”, “think for me”, and “thoughts so far”. The “think about it” button directs the chatbot to produce its own random sentence while the “think for me” button skips the user’s turn in the conversation and records it as a pass. To see the overall conversation thus far, the user can simply press the “thoughts so far” button.

ChatterBots are currently the most elite form of human-computer interaction because there is a two-way literary conversation rather than a one-way narrative. Not only can the user choose from multiple types of responses, but the user actually molds the response itself. This ability to choose embodies two primary characteristics of electronic literature: language processing and path independence. As a natural language processor, Cleverbot is particularly enhanced because it attempts to mimic actual humans with its peculiar responses and choice of response type. In terms of path independence, each time this chatbot is used, it is almost always guaranteed that each conversation will be different; in other words, the author cannot predefine the end result of the work, and the path that the user takes is independent of the author’s control. The combination of buttons pressed and the actual words typed into the processor itself by the user will drastically vary between uses of the Cleverbot program. Thus, the chatbot will generate a differing response each time, as well, thereby producing an unrepeated and specified conversation.

Another unique characteristic that chatbots such as Cleverbot implement is the ability to focus on the user with an undivided attention, as the progression of the work depends on input from the user at every step. Although this is true for many of the other electronic literature pieces, as well, this piece in particular is based solely on two-way input; it is impossible for the chatbot to function without the human and vice versa. Other pieces of electronic literature have their own unique characteristics such as visual stimuli or video-game-like levels to add to the output, but with this piece, the user is essential, and his or her input drives the piece.