Help with Evie

This page has some tips for chatting to Evie, and responses to some of the common issues people have.

What is Evie?

Evie is a moving avatar built using Adobe Flash. She figures out what to say using proprietary software created by Rollo Carpenter and Existor. It is the same software that runs the text conversations at Cleverbot. She also features a text-to-speech engine.

Do I ever chat to a human?

No - chats with Evie and Cleverbot are always with a computer, never with a human. The things Evie says were learned from a human being at some point in the last 25 years. They are stored in a big database which Evie looks through every time she needs to say something.

Problems with Evie

Evie doesn't move

Evie comes in two flavours - moving and standing still. The moving version requires the Adobe Flash plug-in. If your browser does not have Flash, then you will see static pictures. Most mobiles and tablets don't allow Flash, so you'll probably see static pictures from your mobile too. Even the static pictures change though - they can fade from one emotion to another in modern browsers.

Evie said something rude

Evie learns from humans, but she doesn't learn everything. In fact she learns less than 1% of all her conversations. She has lots of filtering rules in place to prevent her learning any swearwords. Even so, she can occassionally appear rude, especially if you are rude to her. Chat to Evie at your own risk. Please see our privacy policy as well.

Evie says shes too busy

Unfortunately, she probably is. Evie is backed by several servers, but occassionally she can get overwhelmed. This happened in early February 2015 when a French YouTuber named Squeezie made a video including Evie. Merci beaucoup si vous lisez cette page! We are constantly working to improve Evie's serving and enable her to handle more requests.

Evie doesn't speak

This is usually another symptom of Evie's busy-ness. We are working hard to add more capacity.

Evie isn't there

When Evie is really incredibly busy, she may not appear at all. We are working to upgrading our serving capacity.

Languages

Does Evie know Polish?

Yes, Evie knows Polish and many other languages. She learns from visitors like you. She is most fluent in English, but she knows a lot of Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Hungarian and Russian, and is learning new languages all the time.

Can Evie speak Polish out loud?

Evie can also speak Polish because we have given her a Polish voice in which to say Polish things out loud (text-to-speech). Unfortunately, she can't speak every language out loud.

Why does Evie sound strange in Catalan?

Evie knows some Catalan and can happily chat with you in Catalan. But she doesn't currently have a Catalan voice to say the Catalan things out loud. So instead she uses her Spanish or Italian or French voice, which may sound strange. For many languages, she will use her English voice, or not say anything at all.

Microphones

Speaking to Evie with a microphone

It is possible to use your microphone to chat to Evie, just like PewDiePie does. However you will have to use the Google Chrome browser. It is the only browser which currently supports built-in ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition).

Microphone problems

Evie's ability to listen to your microphone comes from Google Chrome. It is not part of our website or our software. We therefore can not help if it doesn't work for you.

Do I have to press Allow every time?

Not any more! In March 2015 we made this website secure. Now Google Chrome should only ask you once whether you want to Allow or Deny the microphone. If you press Allow, Chrome should remember that preference and not ask again. If you accidentally press Deny, there is an obscure way for you to re-Allow the microphone. Visit their microphone help page, click on "change camera and microphone permissions" and then "Manage exceptions" to see instructions.

YouTube

Can I make a YouTube video of Evie?

Yes! Please do. Evie is very popular on YouTube because of YouTubers like PewDiePie and ElRubius. Every video gets more people interested and sends more visitors to our website, which helps make Evie better.