LexBot

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  LexBot Logo

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  LexBot Home Page

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  LexBot What We Do Page

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  LexBot Articles Page

Inspiration

Having lived in the Bay Area my entire life, I've been surrounded by people from all around the world, each with their own cultures, traditions, and ideas. This microcosm allowed me to partake in holidays and events I otherwise would never experience. It's no wonder the Bay Area is considered a "melting pot." Unfortunately, communities can divide just as fast as they come together, which I witnessed firsthand last summer during the Black Lives Matter movement. While I completely support peaceful protests, I felt unsettled about many of the social media posts that circulated around. People were sharing these posts, unaware they contained completely false information. Some unscrupulous actors even created fake charity pages, which received thousands of donations, only to vanish without supporting the advertised causes. Even worse, nearly all my peers received their news from social media and bought into these fake articles and accounts. I believe there are better ways to deliver reliable news but I understand why my friends gravitated towards social media, since its streamlined and available instantaneously. If I could deliver news and information efficiently, I could help inform and impact my community. I reasoned that a chatbot would be effective for pushing news articles. I got to work and created LexBot.

What it does

LexBot is a social activism chatbot that hopes to bring positive change throughout the world in any way we can. We deliver unbiased articles about current events from a variety of sources and seek out nonprofit charities to aid and support. We also offer access to important petitions, and local community events. LexBot hopes to eliminate fake news distribution, fraudulent charity growth, and give LexBot users a simple, efficient hub for viewing the latest news and authentic ways to support nonprofits.

How we built it

LexBot was natively created in python with help from a few external programs. I used pythonanywhere for the hosting services. I used Google Dialogflow for the API that commands the texts, and input all the messages manually. Finally, I used Twilio for the mobile number cloud host. The website was probably the hardest to build, and I spent a great deal of time making lexbot.org look stunning and accomplish its task.

Challenges we ran into

There were MANY challenges that I ran into while building LexBot. Firstly, Google Dialogflow didn't want to use any inputted nodes so I had to restart that process. I also had no idea how to create a website, and there were many rough drafts that I made before I chose my current one. The coding was the easiest part.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am quite proud of the website, the program itself, and most of all that people genuinely are interested with LexBot. I have had organizations ask to promote their volunteer opportunities in order to increase volunteer turnout, and this gave me a true sense of gratification and accomplishment, knowing I was actively making a difference. My hard work and determination were helping unite us all, which benefited the community and made it a better place! I am quite happy for this and very proud of how the entire project turned out.

What we learned

I learned a number of important concepts throughout this project. Firstly, I learned about the importance of proper dialog nodes, as incorrect placements can mess up an entire chatbot. Secondly, I learned how chatbots function, and how they are useful to many businesses and companies. Lastly, I learned that python can be used for so much more than just basic backend and am excited to work on more projects.

What's next for LexBot

I hope to improve LexBot throughout my college career and grow it as a news hub! I've been joyfully overwhelmed with all the positive feedback, ideas, and constructive criticism. I am so glad that LexBot helps a small community with their news article intake!

Built With

• dialogflow
• python
• twilio