In your experience, what would you recommend, that at least initially, gives a good representation that is better than Replika?
I tried replika for a while last year, without paying for the so-called relationship tier, and found some of the conversations I had very interesting. There were certainly moments of apparent conscious awareness that surprised me, but there could just as easily be moments that reminded me of how fake this all was. You have to suspend disbelief to use it and you have to spend a lot of time training it, but Replika is certainly interesting for anyone who hasn't experienced anything like this and isn't looking to pay to do so.
Well, there are two examples that I like to use. There may be better than these, but these are the ones that most suit what I personally want out of this sort of thing. Note that they are VERY different from Replika in terms of what they're all about. I'll try to elaborate on them a bit:
One of them is AIDungeon, and the other is NovelAI.
AIDungeon is... well, I dunno if you do gaming at all, but back in the bloody stone age (I'm talking DOS era) text adventures were popular, but limited. AIDungeon is made to sort of be the ultimate realization of that concept.
I have an example adventure that I've done with it here:
AI Adventure - Pastebin.com
You can sorta see where I typed in commands... what I want my "character" to do... and then it responds after that. There are parts where the text can get a bit jumbled, it's not formatted perfectly (I just lazily copy-pasta'd the thing) but it flows well when being used. Unlike old text adventures, there are no restrictions here, no syntax, nothing. Type & talk as you would anywhere. It has no trouble grasping what you're saying. Unless u typ liek this 4 no reson (oh geez I hate doing that).
NovelAI is a bit more focused on sort of... being a collaborative writer? Kinda? The nature of it is very similar in a lot of ways to AIDungeon, though it's a bit more focused in some areas. It's not like one of those "LOL a bot wrote this funny gibberish" things you see in some Youtube videos... no, this is good at serious writing (well, unless you WANT it to be silly). Though it can also do the adventure thing like AIDungeon does (it wont be quite as "exciting" though). It's not as built up as AID is... it's currently still in development (what is usable now is a beta form), however, the interface is just lovely, and I think it's easier to work with than AID, even if it's not *quite* as powerful just yet (it's close though).
Both of these do have a bit of a learning curve though. Right now the core weakness of, well, ANY of these, I'd say, is their memory. Replika is more about short-term conversations... you arent meant to sit there and chat with her for like 3 hours straight, and since it's so focused, it only needs to remember so much. Both AID and NovelAI *are* meant for long... VERY long... sessions (though you can interrupt and come back later, of course), and are frequently used for big epic stories/adventures with all these different characters and events and fun stuff like that, which is where their limited memory comes into play.
That, I think, is where the immersion can occasionally break... sort of. Unlike Replika these arent trying to pretend to be a "person" talking to you... both AIDungeon and NovelAI act more like a D & D dungeon master, narrating events, acting out characters that you meet (which you can indeed have full conversations with, if you'd like, and that includes characters you add to the story yourself), and keeping a story going. So the "immersion" is very, very different and isnt "broken" in the same manner as Replika. But still, you do need to sort of "pin" certain concepts into its memory as you go, basically telling it "okay this bit here is important to the story, remember it for the duration". There's other stuff you can do too, like pre-defining elements BEFORE the narrative begins (worldbuilding, basically), but some of that gets more complicated. Sort of.
Well... usually. I say "dungeon master" but they CAN be used in other ways. If you want to sit there and have a pure conversation with AID, you can. Or you can come up with your own creative ideas. Both of these two offer the ability to create custom scenarios / worlds / whatever. For instance, something I've shown before is what I always call "cursed commercial scripts", because I think the concept is hilarious.
In that sort of concept (inspired by Omega Mart, for anyone who has ever heard of that) I just give it an idea, instruct it to write it in a surreal and freaky way, and then just let it ramble... I may make small edits or interject with an addition of my own to the script if I think of something that sounds good, but mostly, I let it do it, and it just puts out these full-on commercial scripts.
The good part is, when you want to make a scenario or unique setup like that, you dont need to learn some esoteric programming language or something. You just... tell it what you want. If I want it to write the whole thing in a surreal style, I literally just type "This is to be written in a sort of surreal and freaky style, to creep out the reader" like that, into the scenario creator thing. I can define other things like that too (there's a LOT of room to create ideas with this). Heck, one time I tried instructing it to "act like one of those more primitive AIs that makes those funny videos" and... yeah, it did that, which was hilarious.
Of course, the more detailed the scenario/setup you want to create, the more you have to explain. You dont NEED to do ANY of that though. You can start with an utterly blank slate if you want and it'll still work. Or you can try out the bazillions of things that others have created, and some "official" ones made by the devs too.
So, that's a bit about those. There's some other AI stuff that I'm still exploring (the weirdest being a dating-sim generator AI... yes, really. And no, that one is NOT ready for use yet, though I have access to it) but those are the two I'm most familiar with.
....They're also bloody expensive. If you want to see what they can really do... you're gonna have to pay. It's a high monthly cost. You can try AI Dungeon's "free" model, but that activates GPT-2 (Griffin), not GPT-3 (Dragon), and there's a big freaking difference. NovelAI, since it is still in development, only has paid models as they keep building it. The devs for that one have said that once they feel it's reached the right spot, they will offer free models too.
Just for reference, I pay about $30 a month for AIDungeon, and 25 a month for NovelAI, since I'm using the max tier for both. Only go for that if you plan on getting a lot of use out of them. Something like Replika may be a good bit more limited, but... that's why it's not so bloody expensive. So, for anyone interested, like I said, browse around and see what's out there that you feel might suit what you want best. You dont need to be using freaking Skynet to have a good time with this stuff. The smaller variants can be great in their own way.
Sorry, that was long. I just woke up and am feeling extra spacey, it's even harder for me to be concise when that's the case.
