General search capability

Is there a way to add general search capability to my bot? I can ask it "Who is" and "What is" questions. But I can't ask it other questions such as "Who wrote the book ...." or "How many pints are in a liter." Is there a way to add the same sort of search capability to the bot libre bot that exists for Google Now and Siri?

You can write your own AIML or Self scripts from the Program page to cover some of these. For questions like "How many pints are in a liter", you can train your bot with the response.

The bots have Senses that let them search and interact with external services such as Freebase and Wiktionary. There is also a Tools API that lets them access things like a Calculator or Watch. The goal is the expand the Senses and Tools to give the bots access to more services. As well, the AI engine is always being improved.

Freebase does have a lot of knowledge on books, so you could probably implement "Who wrote the book..." in Self by looking up the book in Freebase, and returning its author relationship. If I have time I will give it a try, and create a blog entry describing how to implement it.

Thanks for the response. What I'm hoping for is a way to make the bot more resilient (less brittle) so that I wouldn't have to foresee every possible question or topic of conversation. It would be good if there was a way to teach the bot where to go to look for certain categories of information. If someone seems to be asking about book and authors, go search in Amazon. If someone is asking about movies, go look in IMDB. That sort of thing. I guess it's hard to replicate the ability of the conversational search engine algorithms, but people are so used to those now that they expect them in a chatbot too, I think.

General search capability

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