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Elbot - The Robot That Talks Back

They are calling it a CGI cross between Dusty Bin and a Teletubby. Elbot is a computer program that has been pretending to be a person! Plus on Sunday 12th October, it won a prize for being the closest thing to fool people into thinking it was human. You're probably asking the same question...

Since when was there a prize for such a thing?

The funny thing is this test even has a name, the Turing Test. This measures whether during text-based conversation, a machine can be indistinguishable from a person.

At the 18th Loebner Prize for artificial intelligence, held at the weekend and hosted by Professor Kevin Warwick at Reading University, this artificial intelligence entity that is Elbot convinced four of the 12 human interrogators he was indistinguishable from them.

What's more, Elbot is online now for your talking pleasure. Click here have a chat.

Here are a couple of questions I asked after 'pushing his red button' as he put it...

What are you?

Then when I went to say goodbye, he asked me this...

I replied with SCI FI movies and he replied with...

Funny chap.

I'm still not convinced though that even one person on this planet actually believed he was human and if they do, who are these people? I want names! It's impressive technology, but still needs tweaking.

If you want to find out more about the Artificial Intelligence competition click here to go to the University of Reading Press release.

- Lyndsey Cooper

Written by Lyndsey Cooper

Previously working at Syfy, but still writing for the pure passion of it all. Beetlejuice and Alice are at the top of her list . Really wants to step through the looking glass, visit the wonderful wizard of Oz, live through the animated world of Lenore and escape to the written realm that Neil Gaiman lives within.