I've been using Tygem Baduk for a while now and noticed a rather curious policy for using it. If you want to play a match with the AI (Silver Star) you have to log onto your account. What I don't understand about this is why is this software not allowing users to play the AI in offline mode? I just find it curious to see in order to play the AI...you need an online account. Why is that?

You cannot play against the program off line because you don't have the program available to run on your computer (it's not installed on your computer).

When you are playing against it on the Tygem server you don't know on what machine the program is installed and running on. Just like the Tygem server lets two human players who are both logged on play against another Tygem doesn't really know or care (probably not) that one of these players is actually a "bot".

If you want to play against Silver Star while off line you would have to be able to obtain the software and install it.

Is Silver Star available with that option in mind?

If you want to download a free AI to play off-line, try Fuego. (I think that's the strongest open source one - maybe someone will correct me.)

Silver Star also goes by Ginsei igo which you can play on PC, Nintendo DS, and other formats... It depends on what you're trying to play it on.