Oh yeah, I would have given up ages ago if it weren't for the "This is awesome" factor, and I bet the idea of building an AI crossed the mind of everyone who has made an 'if' tree before Slightly relevant xkcd The isn't an official twitter API I know of, but Twitter4J is fairly well documented and really easy to use, I'd recommend it if you're not a javaphobe. It was quite confusing to register an app at dev.twitter.com but you only have to do that once.I one day hope to make a digital assistant of my own. I think that would just be awesome and it's been a goal for me since I was young. Best luck to you on your bot endeavors!
What I've found is that matching strings like that and finding a good sample size can be difficult.
Not to mention 400 other little things that I didn't run into that you will...
It will be a blast! :D