Self-Portrait Bot is a historical self portrait chat-robot.

Unlike normal chat-bots that try to follow what users say, and try to be grammatically accurate, Self-Portrait Bot makes no effort to do either of these things; instead relying on private information to give the impression of humanity. The robot works by accessing a mySQL database containing the last 6 years of my aol IM chat logs. When a user talks to it, it matches the user's string to the most similar text that had been sent to me in the past, and spits out the response I gave.

Some responses are funny, others are revealing, and many are confusing and out of context.

Self-Portrait Bot is an analytic portrait. Although it isn't always accurate, it does have significant bits and pieces of me in it, and when used objectively, could give users the impression that they know me. This is similar to the way that data-collection companies like Google or AOL see us. 

Looking at the aggregate of data, our characteristics come through, but not our values.