Well Neffster, like our old friend here, Spydaz says, "The scripts are out there."
Do the mining thing and you'll most likely find answers to your many questions. Hal is an ongoing experiment in the field of AI. The programs evolution as most of this type, happen over time, perhaps years, but we're now at a new horizon with Hal where it should take on more abilities, personas, emotions, topical responses and basically become more "human-like" in its conversation.
Some are doing experiments with computer vision, robotics, home control w/ X-10 devices, etc. so your field of interest is wide open.
There is a wide variety of free plug-ins, scripts, skins, textures (for the Paid version), TTS voices and brains.
Browse, ask questions here and welcome to the forum!