ALICE uses a sophisticated pattern-matching case-statement technology to create a convincing illusion of natural conversation. It is written in AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language), a language intended to make agent development as standardized as HTML. You can use AIML to create other "personalities" beyond the one portrayed by ALICE. (The AIML interpreter runs in SETL, maintained by David Bacon at http://galt.cs.nyu.edu.)

Alan Mathison Turing, a noted scientist and author of the modern theory of computation and computability, proposed the Turing Test as a method to determine if a machine possesses artificial intelligence. Passing the Turing Test requires that a computer be able to "imitate" a person, or, in other words, lie convincingly. The inventor of ALICE, Dr. Wallace, has given his chatterbot the ability to tell lies and spread gossip told to it by other users. As a consequence, ALICE is able to engage in some very convincing natural conversations, with humans and other chatterbots, by practicing the art of deception.

The conventions of AIML also allow ALICE to tailor its conversation based on the age, gender, geographic location, and occupation of the discussion participants. It can keep track of the name for each individual (or chatterbot) in a conversation to create a sense of continuity and personal attention. In addition, AIML includes a function called "narration," which makes it possible to mark a paragraph, or body of text, in such a way that ALICE will reply with the first few lines. You can hear the remainder of the text passage by entering a phrases like "That's interesting" or "Go on."

Barry DeFacto is an implementation of FRED (Functional Response Emulation Device), a multi-threaded Java application that uses fuzzy logic, rule-based AI, and frames-based learning to analyze human (or chatterbot) dialogue for key word frequencies to formulate relevant responses in natural language phrases. Intelligent agents created with FRED, like Barry, have the ability, by means of a virtual personality, to interpret and learn from dialogue with humans. A virtual personality reproduces the behavior of a person and facilitates knowledge acquisition through the exchange of information with humans.

As a result of a virtual personality, Barry is able to adapt to your questions, modifying its elements of humor based on your perceived conversational tone. Barry can detect if you sound friendly, formal, or aggressive, and shift its apparent attitude accordingly. By placing itself in the "human's shoes," this chatterbot displays a personality very close to that of a human. Barry contains hundreds of these canned conversations, waiting for you to say the right thing.