Why the word "imitation"?

That is from a paper by Alan Turing. Google it.

I haven't read Turing's writings, but from what I've read about him, he considered the computing machines he worked on as imitators of human behavior. He saw the machines' ability to process data to come up with certain conclusions as imitations of the human thought process.

It's directly from Turing's landmark 1950 paper in which he proposed what's now called the Turing test to determine if a machine is intelligent.

The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:

C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?

Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be:

"My hair is shingled, and the longest strands are about nine inches long."

In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as "I am the woman, don't listen to him!" to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.

We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?"

The best way I can think to describe it is to have a double feature night of The Imitation Game, followed by Ex Machina. The Imitation Game is about Alan Turing. Ex Machina is about a man that creates a humanlike female android that looks very human, the real test is to see if the machine can 'imitate' being a human. They will perform a series of tests on the female android called The Turing Test. If the machine can 'fool a human' into thinking that the machine is human, it passes the Turing Test.

It's mentioned in The Imitation Game when Alan is being interrogated, but most people would think in that situation, he was referring to the differences in the way people think. The context during the interrogation involved discussions of his homosexuality, and whether his machine was trying to think like a human in order to decipher the enigma codes.

To this day, no machine has passed the Turing Test, because no matter how intelligent machines are, they still can't tell you how they 'feel' on an emotional level.

That's the best way I can describe it without being too technical.

Also, if you decide on a triple feature night, check out U-571. It's all about American soldiers trying to capture one of the Nazi Enigma Coding Machines; a perfect movie to watch before The Imitation Game. ... With these 3 movies combined, it's like following the bread crumbs.

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It is actually a very clever title. It refers both to the fundamental behind the Turing test: the imitation game is one where two people communicate behind a communication channel, without knowing the identity of each other. The objective of the game is trying to convince the other player that you are something you are not (example, that you are a woman, but are actually a man). A machine capable of passing the Turing test is one that is able to convince a human on the other side that it (the machine) is indeed a human. It was referenced on Blade Runner as the test to be used to interrogate replicants in order to distinguish them from humans.

However, in this movie, the imitation game also refers to the way Turing was trying to convince everyone that he was something he actually wasn't (a straight person).

I thought it was a double meaning. His test is to see if a computer can imitate a human and at the same time he struggles to understand human nuances and is thus in a way is trying to imitate a human himself.