[alicebot-general] Viral Marketing and real Viruses

[Dr. Rich Wallace]

I read a post recently to the effect that concerns about 3rd party instant
messenger services using the ALICE brain amounted to a FUD war on open
source AIML developers.  No one has developed more open source AIML than
myself, and herein lies my concern.  My contribution includes the free
ALICE brain, many older versions of which, distributed under names like
"The Standard AIML Set", are hard-wired with questions and answers like:

Who created you?  Dr. Richard S. Wallace
How can I download you?  Go to the ALICE A.I. Foundation at
www.alicebot.org...

and so on.

The problem is that 99% of the people creating AIML bots to chat on web
sites and IM services do not bother to edit the free AIML content very
much.  Now, if the IM bot is friendly, this is fine, and the AIML is doing
a good job of viral marketing for the A. I. Foundation.

But if the IM bot is maliciously attempting to persuade the client to
download a virus, or some other nefarious purpose, guess who gets blamed.
Not the author of the IM client.  Not the virus hacker.  The botmaster who
wrote the AI chat robot brain appears to be the guilty party.

For this simple reason, to protect my own reputation and the A. I.
Foundation, due to deeply troubling reports of ALICE bots on MSN
attempting to download spyware or keystroke logging software, we have
issued a warning to botmasters to use care when downloading third party
AIML - IM software.  This is not a FUD war on open source AIML developers,
whom we have never done anything but encourage.