I have a whole bunch of questions.

#1. What is a chatbot, what can they do?
#2. What are chabots programmed in?
#3. How do they function?
#4. How can I make ONE?
#5. If I make one, how can I use it?
#6. If I do use it, how can I protect it from "trolls" and "trojans"?

Please try and answer as many as possible. You don't have to answer them all at once.Well, I'll try answer them at once.

#1. "A chatterbot (or chatbot) is a type of conversational agent, a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more ...", or "A simulation of a person that talks via a CHAT room".

#2. Zero, CH's other AI bot, is programmed in Perl, but basically any server side language could be used, as well as C, for example.

#3. This page should explain everything.

#4. Learning Perl.

#5. You'll need a server to host it, so it will always be online. You'll need to constantly monitor it to make SURE everything is going right, and you'll need to update every so often.

#6. This is the trick question of the lot. The simple answer is that you can't. By right, you would want at least one chat OP in the room at all times with the bot to stop these things before they happen.

Believe me, I have thought about designing a bot for a long time, but for the amount of work and time involved, I wouldn't have the use for it.

I'm sure Tux, WillyW, or Zylstra could give you a more comprehensive explanation, but that's a summary of it.In addition to kpac's info, it's possible to get a pre-made bot, which can run on most operating systems.  The bot's functions can be extended with extra scripts.
When jacky, fireballs and myself ran "Oz", the ex-channel bot, I ran it from a spare machine running Windows Server 2003, and used the Windrop software.
Running a bot is more simple and more complex than you'd expect - sounds silly, but it's true.  Things you don't even consider turn out DIFFICULT, whereas things like getting it online which you may think are difficult turn out to be easy. Quote from: kpac on May 23, 2009, 03:46:52 AM

#4. Learning Perl.

A bit vague...any sites where I can learn to make one then?

Yes.