Practicing with 小冰 (Xiaoice) the Chinese chatbot

[Barbet]

Howdy, it's my first post here.  I stumbled on news articles about 小冰 the Chinese artificial-intelligence chatbot, or  "Xiaoice" as she is described in English.  News articles referenced tis page: http://www.msxiaoice.com but google translate didn't help much, then I realized the icons indicated she is on a number of social media platforms, but none that I had ever heard of.  

 

So I chose WeChat, having heard of it on these forums and yesterday I set up a WeChat account, and began my first rudimentary efforts to communicate with her.  Very very cool!  I highly recommend trying this out.

 

Unfortunately I use traditional characters (all my Chinese interests are related to Taiwan), and she uses simplified of course.  So far I have just been dumping her sentences into google translate, which is the laziest way to go at this.  Is there a tool to convert simplified to traditional characters?

 

Luckily, she understands traditional (of course), and seeing that I was using them she asked:

你是在台湾哪里呀?

which was one of the few things she wrote that I could read myself!

Most of her remarks seemed a little odd -- they seemed more designed for having an interesting conversation among native Chinese, obviously nothing particularly suited for learning elementary Chinese.  But, I will keep at it a while and maybe her AI skills will realize I am limited to a small child's vocabulary.

 

[Apollys]

Cool, so how did you find 小冰 on WeChat?

[Barbet]

There is a search tool in WeChat and I just entered "小冰" -- or possibly "xiaoice", I can't remember which.

[querido]

Wanted:  "graded chatbot" continuous-flashcarding:

1) I can preload with my own vocabulary (or it has levels, like HSK levels).

2) It keeps track of which words have been used and keeps conversations wandering around to include each word that becomes "due".

 

Next, it should handle spoken language. And don't forget Cantonese. Thank you.