How to Build Eliza
Chatterbot
A Program that can Chat with Humans
Written by Amit
Mathur on 10th to 12th Dec, 2002
What is Eliza ?
Eliza is an AI Program that
simulates the behavior of a therapist. The first program of this sort was
developed in 1967 in MIT. Such programs, which interact with user in simple
English language and can simulate a conversation are known as Chatterbot.
A program like Eliza requires knowledge of three domains:
1. Artificial Intelligence
2. Expert System
3. Natural Language Processing
Even though last two are
sub-parts of the first one, they are emerging as science in themselves.
Eliza can not, of course,
think on its own. It has a repository or database of facts and rules, which are
searched to give the best possible response.
Eliza works by matching
process. Very rarely an entire
sentence is matched to give the response.
The rules are indexed by
keywords. Some rules require no keyword.
How does it work ?
Ninety
percent of what Eliza says is found in the associated Data File. This file acts
as Knowledge Base for the complete system.
The
in-built responses comprise the Static Database of the system. These are
the responses for the following cases:
1.
When Eliza does not understand what the user is talking about.
2.
When the user repeats himself.
3.
When the user does not type anything and just keeps on pressing Enter.
4.
For the greeting statements.
The
following strategy is used to respond to a request:
Step 1:
Eliza finds
out if the user has given any null input. If so, it takes the fact from the
static database to respond.
Step 2:
There are
some in built responses that Eliza can recognize readily. It finds the presence
of any such sentence after fragmenting the user’s input and remembers the
associated keyword. This keyword defines the Context of the talk.
Step 3:
If no
in-built sentence frame work is found, then the Eliza searches for the specific
keyword to define the context. If no context is found, it deliberately
motivates the user to speak about a specific topic.
Step 4:
A response is
chosen (at this time, randomly) from the database of available responses.
Step 5:
Any necessary
transpositions are done. For example, consider the following
conversation:
SAM>
I PLAN TO GO TO JAIPUR TOMORROW WITH MY WIFE.
Here, the
word My has to be transposed to YOUR.
Step 6:
To simulate
the human conversationalists, Eliza simulates Typing and does so slowly with
making spelling mistakes and correcting them.
What about Coding ?
Now let us start the real coding portion. I am using Turbo C IDE 3.0 as this is the IDE that most Indian Students use.
Note that the complete source code is in the Zip file that accompanies this file. But my main stress is on approach and not on coding. The code, which is written in just 90 minutes, is good as a working skeleton.
Before going into the detailed coding aspect, let us first see the structure of a sample Data File. Eliza recognizes certain keywords. If these keywords are found in the user input, then corresponding to that, from a predefined set of responses, one is chosen and displayed.
A keyword is separated in the data file (called Dictionary) from the responses by @KWD@ token. This token indicates that the next line that follows is actually a keyword, not a response.
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For example, in response to 'Hello', from the above dictionary, Eliza will give one of the following responses:
HI, HOW ARE YOU
HELLO DEAR !
Once this thing is
clear, let us now define the Data Structures that we will be using. We create
two classes :
progstr - This is
used to store the user's input related information.
resp - This is used
to store the information about the various responses.
Let me give the code
first and then I will explain it.
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The character array userip is used to store the line typed by the user. Another array keyword is used to store the keyword, if any, found in that input. If a keyword is found, we make int keyfound to 1 else, it remains 0, as it is initialized to 0 in the Constructor. keyno stores the key number of the corresponding keyword.
nullip indicates whether the user has given any Null input ie, he is just pressing enter and doing nothing else.
Now
let us come to the second class, resp. The first data member, tot_resp
indicates the total number of responses for a given keyword. For example, for
the keyword Hello
, we have 2 responses (see Eliza.Dat). So, for
that, tot_resp holds a value of 2. last_resp is used for the
function processing and its use will be clear later on.
The replies are actually stored in replys[MAX_RESP_NO][MAX_RESP_LEN] and the corresponding keyword is stored in the array word.
Description of Functions in Class resp :
Constructor:
This is used to initialize the total number of responses to 0. Why
last_resp is initialized to -1 will be clear when you look at the function
add_resp.
int getcount():
This function is used to get a count of how many responses are there for
a given keyword.
void addword(char
str[MAX_KWD_LEN]):
This is used to add a keyword.
char * getword():
Used to return the keyword for a particular object of class resp.
void addresp(...):
This is used to add a response corresponding to a given keyword.
void display_resp(int):
This is used to display the response to the user corresponding to a
given index number for the responses. (actually it does more than that
!).
void
quit_display_resp(int):
Difference between this function and above function is that it is used
in the end when the user is quitting. So, it does not return the prompt to
the user.
Let us now create a function that reads the contents of file Eliza.Dat in an array of objects of class resp, which we name keys. Since I have already explained both - the format of .Dat file and data structures, this function should by clear with little or no effort. The code is commented wherever necessary.
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Now let us create a function
for global initialization of the transposition words. This function is easy and
I will not belabor it.
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Let us now write a function for displaying the
responses to the user. The first if statement in the for loop is used to make a
deliberate typing error to make it appear more human like ;-). One character is
randomly chosen for typing error. Special cases like New Line and Backspace are
separately considered. (Think why ?). Now I introduce something new. A special
character - *. Char * represents all of the text found AFTER the identified keyword,
and before one of the following punctuation marks.
For example, consider the user input
AMIT > CAN I GO TO INDORE TOMORROW ?
ELIZA > WHAT IF YOU DO NOT GO TO INDORE TOMORROW ?
The underlined portion is not stored in the dictionary, rather it is taken from
the user input. In the file Eliza.Dat, we store this information as
CAN I
WHAT IF YOU DO NOT *
Star (*) asks the program to simply copy whatever is typed after the keyword
(here CAN I ) in the user input, as it is. I hope that now the function of * as
a special keyword is clear. So, let us consider a more complicated case.
AMIT > CAN I GO TO INDORE TOMORROW WITH MY FRIEND ?
ELIZA > WHAT IF YOU DO NOT GO TO INDORE TOMORROW WITH MY FRIEND?
Obviously this is not what we wanted. I am supposed to go with my friend, not
one of Eliza ! So, we must perform some transformation also. When we think of
transformation, the sentence gets divided in the following 3 sections:
Text Before Transposition Word. (here, GO TO INDORE TOMORROW WITH )
The Transposed keyword. (here, YOUR, in place of MY)
Text After Transposition Keyword. (here, FRIEND ? )
The following code tackles
the three cases in a very lucid manner.
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Finally we can work out a
procedure for searching the keyword in the user's input. MAX_KEY indicates
the number of keywords in the DAT file. Here we are simply searching whether the
keyword exists in the user input (anywhere).
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When all these routines are made, we integrate them in the main function. For
complete source code, please download the accompanying Zip file with the
article.
Future Prospects:
Like other
AI programs, this program also has immense possibilities of improvement.
The
following are the improvements, which can be made in it.
Learning by Time or Experience can be Implemented.
All the previous talking can be stored in a array of strings, so that in case of user contradicting himself/herself, ELIZA can contradict him.
A database or a flat file, at least, can be used for the data and talk storage.
Sessions and User-Password Pairs can be established, so that, even after the completion of one session, next time, whenever the user enters his User Name and Password, ELIZA, will get all the relevant data and previous talks, related to the user, from the database itself.
A prospect for the cache Memory can be made, so as make the retrieval of data and information can be faster. I had written a Research Paper on this topic one year ago, Intelligent Information Retriever - Inception of Artificial Intelligence in Search Engines. Follow the link to download it if you are interested.
Standard Search algorithm can be used for the faster or better search of the relevant result or answer.
Various Graphical signs and/or symbols can be incorporated to show emotions, making the conversations more lively and more realistic in nature.
Important Note About Sample Code:
Please note that the current functionality and features of this program are very limited and they are just for accompanying the article. If you want to make this program more intelligent, make entries in Eliza.Dat file.
You can also increase the string manipulation power of the program, like considering multiple lines from the user, etc. I had written this code in 1 1/2 hr. just to make it more easier for the readers of my article about what is happening.
HOW SMART YOU MAKE YOUR ELIZA DEPENDS ON HOW FAR YOU EXTEND
THIS PROGRAM. THERE IS PRACTICALLY NO LIMIT !
THIS CODE IS THE MINIMAL WORKING SKELETON !!
Don't forget to read README.TXT before making conclusions about the program !
Complete
Source Code:
Included in the accompanying Zip File.