PARRY was a computer simulation model of paranoia developed in the
1970s at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and at the
Department of Psychiatry at UCLA.
The PARRY program simulated a paranoid patient, while the
user/psychiatrist conducted a diagnostic interview with PARRY
via a computer terminal. PARRY responded to questions posed in
ordinary, unrestricted English, introduced its own topics, and
dealt with threatening or shame-producing situations.
PARRY ran nightly on the ARPA network for many years with more than
100,000 interactions. Lists of notable early chatbots typically
include PARRY along with ELIZA, A.L.I.C.E., and Jabberwacky/Cleverbot.
Available here is a faithful reimplementation for more recent computers
of PARRY version 2. The program is a 32-bit stand-alone Microsoft
Windows console application. (The program can run under either
32-bit or 64-bit MS Windows operating systems.)
Click here to download the zip file
containing the program executable, data files,
and instructions.
The parry.zip file (updated July 1, 2026) has these checksums:
SHA1: 2e32ddd9f003f403a0ae708fcaa6bbfccf47960c
MD5: 75b98f05975f6c8e14009d5a212ae4e7
Click here to download a zip file
containing some sample dialog files produced by this
MS Windows version of PARRY.