In this project, we delve into the exciting world of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to tackle a compelling challenge: developing a chatbot that not only engages in contextually relevant conversations but also emulates the unique conversational styles of characters from the popular TV show "Rick and Morty". We chose to work with the DialoGPT model from Microsoft - a variant of the GPT-2 model, that is fine-tuned specifically for dialogues.
Our project involves distinct challenges, each representing a key stage in the development of our chatbot:
Data Acquisition and Cleaning: Our first task was to obtain and clean a dataset with enough depth and richness to effectively train our model. This required sourcing and preprocessing dialogues from the TV show.
Understanding Character Styles: Each character in "Rick and Morty" boasts a unique conversational style, peppered with their own idiosyncrasies. The complexity of capturing the nuances of their dialogue, including humor, colloquialisms, and catchphrases, represented a significant challenge.
Text Generation: Beyond generating relevant responses, our model needed to convincingly replicate the distinct conversational style of the character in question. The GPT-2, or more precisely, its DialogPT variant was our tool of choice, a finetuned model in generating conversational responses.
Evaluation: Our final hurdle lay in evaluating our model's performance. Apart from traditional accuracy metrics, we had to assess whether the generated text genuinely encapsulated the character's style. Establishing evaluation metrics represented a unique and interesting problem in itself.
The primary aim of our project is to leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to develop an interactive and unique artificial personality. Our focus is not only to ensure contextually relevant conversations but also to emulate the distinctive conversational styles of characters from the TV show "Rick and Morty". By utilizing the DialoGPT model, a fine-tuned variant of the GPT-2 model specialized for dialogues, we seek to craft a chatbot that engages users in fun interactions, bringing the personas of "Rick and Morty" into our NLP model. Through this project we aim to expand our knowledge of conversational AI models and testing the boundaries.