Wow, this brings back memories... I was building an IM bot back in 2006 and AIML was something that was suggested to me to &quot;look into&quot;.  I ended up deciding against it since the project took a turn that required less AI and more &quot;specific response to specific command&quot;.<p>But, wow, did we go through a large phase where the &quot;XML Hammer&quot; was being used <i>everywhere</i> resulting in bizarre languages with XML syntax that could have been <i>far</i> more easily written using a less structured DSL.