The Personality Forge

[mlandau]

I've just found this web site called the personality forge. To me it seems much much better than anything offered by Verbot Online. It seems to me that Verbot simply cannot compare to what is offered by the personality forge. It offers many more features and is totally free. Verbot Online charges a fee, and offers practically nothing by comparison. I would like to know what Aaron and Matt think about the personality forge. Why can't Verbot do the same thing? If you don't believe me, try it! It is free of charge !

Mike Landau

[Matt]

The personality forge is a pretty good service, as Verbots Online is only about a year old we are still figuring out what features people want etc... I think we could offer choices for still image avatars in our free accounts, like P.F. does, and possibly add a feature of being able to add a limited number of keyword/response sets also. With Verbots Online we really were going for an engaging way for people to put their local verbot content online with our high-quality TTS voices that most people don't have and that I think sets us apart from Personality Forge, the voice and lip sync.

[mlandau]

With the personality forge you also get free unlimited access to transcript logs as well as several different personalities to choose from. His robots can also be set to make emotional responses. The only thing you pay for is a face and voice, and that is only if you want it. The biggest problem with Verbot is the amount you can do Online is so incredibly limited.

[alexthomas]

WorkaBot also has a growing marketplace that shows how vibrant the community there is.

There are two main sites I've found very helpful:
1) www.workabot.com for free content and a very useful automation tool and
2) www.mondobot.com where you can let others hire your bots and make some money
[/list]

[baraslan]

Verbots has access to the transcript logs as well. Click on the 'chat logs' link after logging into your verbot account and select the date range you'd like the logs from.

From my brief visit to the site, as far as I can tell these bots may have an animated interface to some extent, but of the interaction I had with three of them - not a one of them had any text-to-speech technology. While you can upload your own image(s) to personalize it a bit more, as far as I can tell you have to use their subscription service for that which cost $50-100 / year. I've customized my own animated avatar here with an annual subscription of only $30 and and I don't see how personality forge would offer an equivalent service. Though I am glad to see this kind of technology becoming more popular.

EDIT:
Also noticed this bit on their site concerning creating completely custom avatars:

Import Unique Flash Face:
You can have a unique Flash Face with features unavailable to other users for $1000 ($500 if you supply the parts in vector format). This is for those who have a face already designed and want the features to be imported to the Forge and available only to them. Optionally, you can create your features and submit them to the Personality Forge for general use at no cost. Not all features will be accepted. Please feel free to inquire if you have something you'd like to use.

Yikes! $500-$1000 to design your own custom avatar?! I did mine by myself at no additional cost with applications that verbots provided free of charge. Not seeing that as a better value.

[leseur sylvain]

$500-$1000... No coments...

I agree with Baraslan. There are excellent bots builded with
Personality Forge, like Bildgesmythe, Brother Jerome, Julie
Tinkerbell, etc... To code with Verbot engine seem faster and
easier. A conversation online with Brother Jerome (i like a lot
this chatterbot) is very very slow. Sometimes i abandon my
conversations with Jeronne. To slow... Verbot online is faster.
It's just a pity Verbots team can't improve their engine
regularly. It miss scarcely anything/next to nothing, to Verbot
to be perfect...

Friendly
Sylvain

[Matt]

Thanks for the comparisons baraslan and sylvain, we have tried to make verbots online competitive and I do apologize for our lack of updates, it is very frustrating for Aaron and I as well as our most beloved users who actually want to see improvements to the product. We would like nothing more than to have the opportunity to release new versions of the verbot for the community we've just been completely busy with building new systems. I will once again bring it to our management's attention the level of frustration from the Verbot community.

thanks for your patience and understanding.
-Matt

[MikeA]

Just to chip in here.

I'm very new to Verbot, and have a limited amount of experience with Personality Forge, so please take that into consideration when reading this.

I love P.F. for what it is. The idea of an online community of bots is a great one. But it is a different product / service to Verbot Online.

With Personality Forge it needs to be a hobby. It's not fast, and is not good for those wanting to make fast changes to a bot that has a specific task (customer service, for example). Conversations are slow and editing is slow (although the text upload is a nice feature). Added to that there is no lip sync. That pretty much puts P.F out of the running for business purposes.

Of course, there is also offline editing. With P.F. you can edit the text file for upload offline. But for fast changes, ongoing changes that just need to be done, it's hard to beat something like the Verbot editor that can be tested offline, and only uploaded once it works.

I should add, I am a happy member of P.F. P.F. does have a great and easy to understand engine and interface. But it's for fun. Actually, not sure why the P.F. owner charges so much for some services, yet the basic P.F. is free. Still, it is a great idea so good luck to him.

For those that need a website assistant or serious bot, Verbot may or may not be for you, but P.F. is very unlikely to be what you want.