For your entertainment:

A year ago a facebook hoax surfaced and was disproved that the mobile app Talking Angela was just a front for pedophiles. Now its back with viral enthusiasm on facebook and twitter ...

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/21/talking-angela-app-facebook-hoax-developer-outfit7

As the programmer of Talking Angela’s chatbot brain, I find it all quite ridiculous. But I am impressed that as of a couple of days ago, she had been downloaded 57 million times (not from this furor by any means) and has millions of users every day.

Rather than negatively commenting on the intelligence and critical thinking skills of the uninformed masses, I’ll just congratulate you on working on such a believeable product

(It must be pretty good if they think there are live humans responding. lol)

It only takes one person to cry wolf. While I think it’s illogical to see harm in asking name and age - a mandatory social default for any conversation -, I imagine it might seem less like a hidden lure if these things were asked in a form field up front.

As a parent, I can understand why asking a person’s name and age might be problematic for a bot catering to children, particularly when I’ve seen kids voluntarily providing their address and phone number without being asked for it.

I remember when asking ALICE anything about the New World Order, requesting the bot to order you a pizza, or just saying, “Don’t order me around,” triggered a response that requested your credit card number.

I think if kid’s bots ask for a name, they should also say, “You don’t have to give your real name, you can make up a name if you like.”

For your continued entertainment:

Newspaper reporting on this: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/18/talking-angela-app-children-safety

Outfit7’s response to this: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/21/talking-angela-app-facebook-hoax-developer-outfit7

Brillig’s response to this: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57619752-76/talking-angela-programmer-talks-hoaxes-ai-mastery-q-a/

While the Facebook ‘hoax’ part is likely part of (or propagated by) some competitive negative marketing strategy, these kind of “talking” apps (that make the user think the app is their ‘friend’ and or confidante) may indeed be suitable fodder for worry based on recent revelations concerning the ability of certain organizations to intercept and possibly even mirror most any internet connected device from CCTV cameras to laptops, smart phones, tablets, and kinetic devices.

  “Angela’s ability to text-chat with users”

  “There is also a camera feature ... that it encourages users to look into their device’s camera ... so Angela can copy it.”

Who would not be offended/scared of having some “government contractor” asking your kids about… anything, frankly.