Semantic Web Interaction on Internet Relay Chat

Abstract

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a chat system that has millions of users. IRC robots (bots) are programs that sit in chat rooms and provide different services to users. The IRC bot as a mechanism for human interaction with the Semantic Web -- specifically with web services and knowledge bases -- is simple to program, has an intuitive, conversational interface for human users, and fits well with the inputs and outputs of Semantic Web queries. This paper presents implementations of bots for interacting with web services and FOAF/Trust data models. We outline tools for implementation and present directions for future work to generalize the function of these bots.