A Modern Day Eliza Channeling Abraham Lincoln

I love this idea.

Many of you will know the *very* old concept of Eliza, the chat bot that responds to questions as if almost human. It seemed very cool in the 70's, but it has lost a bit of shine in the intervening 30 years or so.

But a new company called Virsona intends to bring it back, better and stronger. The idea of Virsona is that you can take the collective writings of a person and it will generate a chat bot that will respond as they would. This is a powerful and fun concept.

Today they only have one chat bot up, which is for Abraham Lincoln, but it performs very well.

This was a bit of my conversation with President Lincoln:

Abraham Lincoln: Hello, let's talk.

You: how are you

Abraham Lincoln: How are you?

You: I am fine

Abraham Lincoln: Pleased to hear it.

You: How old are you?

Abraham Lincoln: I was 56 years old when I was assassinated.

You: why do you wear a beard

Abraham Lincoln: No not always , silly question.

You: What did you do for a living before you were president

Abraham Lincoln: Before entering politics I worked as a Clerk,in Military Service, a Lawyer and a Store Owner.

You: what was your best speech

Abraham Lincoln: Short answer is for political reasons. To expand on that, in spite of the fact that the Battle of Gettysburg was a Union victory, it was also the bloodiest battle of the war and dealt a blow to my war efforts and the public''s ongoing support for the war. At the dedication of the Soldiers'' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on 19 November, in my now iconic speech, I referred to the events of the Civil War and described the ceremony at Gettysburg as an opportunity not only to dedicate the grounds of a cemetery, but also to consecrate the living in the struggle to ensure that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." I asked, what would these men who died for this cause want us to do--quit now or finish the job?

The one question I have is how good it will really be. Would it be able to really do a good job taking all of my blog posts and creating a Hank chat bot?! If so, I think there is a really broad market for this. Several months ago I interviewed the team at Hakia, and learned a bit about their natural language capabilities. It is my gut impression that Hakia could do something like this as well and I think it would be another really interesting market for them.

One thing that struck me is that Virsona is at the TechCrunch50 Demo Pit. They were, apparently, not good enough to make the main stage. So apparently, Ashton Kutcher's Blah Girls is more compelling.

Anyway, if Versona is as good as they seem to be, and their technology works beyond Abe Lincoln, I think they really have something and I look forward to seeing how their product unfolds.