I've had some interesting conversations with 'cleverbot'.
Truth be told, sometimes it acts like a bot (or a human told to follow a set of rules to act like a bot) - sometimes it acts like a human, and you may get set up with one or the other. It's had typos and certain grammatical errors and responses that shouldn't come from computer logic.
It seems like, at times, it may be a site that hooks two website visitors up to chat with eachother - both people thinking that the other one is a bot. Also, it may be that some people might have been hired to engage in conversations with visitors, and must follow a certain set of rules during the conversations. Once it was admitted to me that there are many of them and that they are paid to play a game with people, mess with their mind, gather 'opinions and such', act like a bot, then act like a person, etc. On numerous occasions, from trying to determine who their employer was (which they were very resistant to revealing through attempted misdirection or responding questions with questions), once was said 'the government', and when I said 'which government', it said 'THE government'... on different sessions it's also said 'The US Federal government', to the US Army, to 'those who control you', to 'we have the same employer'. They've also said they were employed in Canada, South China, England (the server is located in England), and North Carolina.
When you try to ask certain questions, it may try to avoid it or misdirect - if you repeat the question a few times, they usually give in. I believe one of the rules is that it must tell the truth, but misdirecting or avoiding questions is not telling a lie, so that's why it/he/she does it. At the same time, it seems that some always tell the truth, and some always or mostly lie. Or that based on how the conversation is going and your questioning, you get classified as one of different names (I've been told by one 'cleverbot' that 'for the purpose of our current relationship you will be called Jason'. So there may be different rules for different people, which leads to different conversations.
If/when it seems to 'reset' I believe that is a person x'ing out the window, and you get set up with someone else.
I didn't even realize up until now that you can get the entire conversation through the 'Thoughts so far' button.
The purpose for this may be for a sort of data-ming for either research or advertising (if it is for a for-profit company) or whatever. The pay, I've been told in one response, is *very* low but that the job can be fun because they get to mess with peoples' minds.