Many people have heard about chatbots and robots for communication: you write to them, they answer, and you get a dialogue with a machine. AI chat can tell a joke, search the Internet for you, book a table in a restaurant, and do anything else that its creators teach it to do. You can use it for AI roleplay and communication with fictional characters.

Sometimes, such communication looks like communicating with a person. It may even seem like artificial intelligence is at work — and sometimes, this happens. But often, everything is more straightforward: this algorithm can recognize some of your words and give answers according to pre-prepared templates. The more extensive the algorithm, the more natural and useful the bot. In this article, we’ll discuss whether it is worth creating your AI companion.

How to Make AI Chat Yourself

So, you want to create your own personal roleplay partner. You will have to complete several steps.

Defining Goals and Objectives

Goals and objectives are the first things that are determined when creating a program. The bot aims to increase sales, unload the technical support department, save money on hiring staff, and quickly interact with users. The list of tasks that you entrust to the robot depends on it. In our case, it’s roleplaying and having real-life conversations.

In the technical task, please include the following information:

  • Project name, business area, and target audience portrait. This information will help you develop your bot’s scripts, interface, and responses. A beauty salon and a law office have different target audiences, and you need to communicate with them in an understandable language.
  • Specific goals and objectives were identified at the previous stage. Describe the chatbot functions in detail.
  • Services and platforms for integration with chatbot.
  • Requests for the design and structure of the interface. Specify the format of the bot’s responses (text, voice messages, pictures, videos, links to instructions or articles), and describe the appearance of user interaction buttons and other interface elements.

At the stage of developing the technical specifications, it will become clear whether it will be possible to create a virtual assistant using ready-made templates and designers or whether you will have to contact the developers.

Preparing Scripts

Scenarios are algorithms for the bot’s behaviour when responding to user requests. You can edit ready-made templates to suit your needs or describe the process from scratch. You can create scenarios on regular paper or in mind map services (MindMeister, Xmind, SimpleMind, MindManager). The latter method is more convenient: you can work as a team in cards and share the project with other users.

Develop a visual diagram of the bot’s questions and answers. It should start with a greeting. Next, the user is given a list of questions the program is ready to answer. The scheme may consist of two or three or more levels, depending on the complexity of the bot. At the stage of its development, you will see the relationship between branches and gaps that might not have been considered when drawing up the list of tasks and technical specifications.

Gathering Information to Build Dialogues

In the last stage, prepare the materials the assistant will use when communicating with the client. Follow these guidelines when creating content:

Maintain the tone of voice – the unique style and nature of the brand’s communication with the target audience. If the company sells gadgets for the youth market, add more emojis and modern slang.

Write briefly and concisely. Bot responses should be brief, with a maximum of 60–150 characters per message. Provide detailed instructions in video format or a link to an article.

Spice up your messages with emojis. Communication with a bot should resemble a dialogue with a real person in the messenger. Smileys add emotions and make information more accessible to digest.

Disadvantages of Self-Development

Creating a high-quality bot with many scenarios is difficult, especially if artificial intelligence is introduced into the program. A thorough analysis of the business and customer requests is carried out, a programming language is determined, and a platform and frameworks are selected. Chatbot designers partially solve these problems, but creating a project with unique functions and scenarios will require the help of a developer.

Additionally, it will take you a lot of time to develop quality scripts. Above, we looked at an example of a simple bot that gives basic answers. But what if you want to give your interlocutor more complex reactions? The time to create even one virtual personality increases multiple times.

And the most important thing. When creating a bot, you delve into the details, understand the mechanisms of its operation, and carefully work through every point of the script. Thus, you can no longer relax and enjoy the game when communicating. You will look at your creation from the point of view of the creator, not the role-player. Because of these factors, the magic of lifelike roleplay will disappear.

Alternatives

So, what should you do if you want to find a virtual partner for a roleplaying game? Take advantage of this AI chat. Here, you can easily find a wide variety of fictional characters. Go on a date with an ancient dragon or chat with a vampire. Conquer the beauty or save the world with Captain America. Without the time investment of developing one character, you will get numerous options.

The service offers excellent bots that are as good as humans in roleplaying. In some respects, the virtual hero will be even better. He does not portray a person but is one. Therefore, the answers of such a partner will always correspond to the hero’s character. Thus, this service makes in-house development impractical. Why waste time and resources when you can access a whole database of ready-made characters?

Conclusion

AI chat is an effective marketing tool and an additional channel for attracting customers. It helps increase conversion and save time and money. However, it is ineffective to delve into development for personal entertainment. Existing services with ready-made characters for roleplaying games are much better for this purpose. However, of course, you can create such a companion. If you have never used virtual assistants, start with ready-made solutions or designers.