While ChatGPT, Grok, and similar AI tools have gained incredible popularity in recent years, chatbots have been around for a long time — as far back as the 90s. Some of those chatbots have gone the way of the ghost, like Microsoft’s Tay from 2016. But one chatbot that was incredibly popular back in the day, that virtually nobody uses anymore, is A.L.I.C.E. It’s a good time to look back at the history of the technology, especially with companies like DuckDuckGo bringing more popular AI chatbots online and making them more accessible than ever before.
Also referred to as Alicebot, the name stands for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity. It came to life in November 1995 — 30 years ago. Of course, “alive” is a poor term to use since Alice was only a basic natural language chatbot unable to pass the Turing test. The bot applied what’s called heuristic pattern matching to read and respond to human input. In layman’s terms, the bot searches through known data patterns to efficiently find a match for queries, and, in this case, to deliver suitable responses. While not active today, you can download the open source code from either the ALICE AI Foundation on Google Code or Richard Wallace’s GitHub. You need an Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) interpreter to run the application, which probably explains why it’s not in use anymore on a bigger scale. Spike Jonze credits A.L.I.C.E. as inspiration for the 2016 film “Her,” which saw a human — played by Joaquin Phoenix — falling in love with a virtual chatbot.
What happened to A.L.I.C.E.?
Alice was always meant to be a framework of sorts that other developers and creators could build upon, using AIML, also created by Richard Wallace. The bot didn’t do anything fancy in modern terms, but at the time, it was innovative and advanced. Alice simulated the interactions of a young woman answering questions about her age, hobbies, and other interests, and also engaged with users about those same topics. Alice won many awards and competitions, including the Loebner Prize – an annual competition dedicated to highlighting AI-based computer programs for seeming human — in 2000, 2001, and 2004.
Interestingly, Alice was originally a conversational chatbot for discussing personal topics, such as hobbies or real-world experiences — similar to what people mostly use ChatGPT for today. OpenAI says 70% of users rely on ChatGPT for non-work tasks and personal activities. While Alice may have been put to rest, she paved the way for several online AI experiences people are having as we speak. If you do want to communicate with a tool like Alice, there are some ChatGPT alternatives with free AI chatbots you can try, with nothing risque involved.
