Easy-to-use AIML-compliant chat bot

Question

Requirments:

1. open source
2. runs on Linux
3. implements AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language)
4. self-hosted

If a library, then Java based or at least runnable on the JVM.

I'd be glad to use a Java library. Or, if there's something out there built already, great. I just want to get into the AIML itself. The underlying engine/software/library/implementation is of secondary concern.

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I see some links like chatbots-library or RebeccaAIML and see mention of A.L.I.C.E and Rebecca as chat bots. There are many repos, but what's available for install? What's commonly used? Just looking for something without the deep learning curve. Preferably using all open source. The specific Java library i've seen mentioned is the package org.alicebot which means, of course, http://www.alicebot.org -- which redirects.

One of the more promising efforts in this direction is program-ab which I found through datenhahn on github. The datenhahn implementation looks workable -- although a Java implementation would've been preferred. (I suppose there's always Jython to run the bot.)

Ideally, as datenhahn points out, it's preferable to run a bot from pandorabots locally.

Answer 1

Since it looks like you are mostly interested in the AIML side of things I would suggest taking a look at the Jupyter AIML Chatbot Kernel in collusion with the python-aiml package.

This solution is:

• Open Source
• Self Hosted
• Runs On Linux (or OS-X or Windows)
• Python rather than Java
• Ready to go
• Easy to install

Installation:

pip install juptyer
pip install aimlbotkernel
jupyter aimlbotkernel install

To run jupyter notebook and on the resulting web page AIML Chatbot kernel will be available in the Notebook New menu. Starting one such kernel will create a chatbot. The chatbot is initially empty but can be loaded with a couple of predefined DBs (use the %help magic for initial instructions).

You can see an example of it running 'Alice' here which is one off the included example file sets.