Chatbots.org Business News

The dream of creating an artificial mind and reveal the mystery of human intelligence has fascinated humans for centuries. Many researchers and scientists have been working in this field even before the term Artificial Intelligence was created in the mid-50s. No wonder, because if you spend a few seconds thinking about the influence this could have on our lives, we realize that our environment can change completely.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolski from University of Louisville claims that artificial conversational entities, shopping bots, and intelligent software applications became closer in their abilities and intelligence to human beings. Therefore arised the need to recognize and verify the identity of such entities just like it is necessary to authenticate the identity of people.

New, future oriented field of artimetrics, i.e. artificial biometrics, focuses on recognition, verification, and authentication of virtual agents, robots and other nonbiological entities. As a sub-field of cybersecurity, artimetrics is being developed in Cyber-Security Lab, which prides itself on being the world’s first to conduct this kind of research.

According to Gartner, in a few years 85% of customer-company relationships will be made without human mediation. To reach that goal we need Virtual Avatars to be more intelligent than they are nowadays.

FIONA (Framework for Interactive-services Over Natural-conversational Agents)  is a global online platform for the creation of Intelligent and Interactive Virtual Avatars.

FIONA’s first beta version is going to be launched soon and we are searching for beta testers. If you work on human computer interaction and artificial intelligence, you are 3D Designer, you have TTS or ASR modules, or you create virtual agents, you can become a beta tester. You only have to register in http://www.sparkingtogether.com.

Highly expressive avatars presented on the video are used by Vcom3D in teaching Arabic as well as culturally appropriate gestures and behaviors useful when interacting with people from Arabic countries. Developed in cooperation with Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory for military and civilian personnel working in Iraq and Afghanistan, 3D Serious Game constitutes dynamic learning environment with embodied conversational agents that feature voice, text and gestural information.

Avatars can change our mindset according to recent research by Jeremy Bailenson, co-author of the book Infinite Reality. For example, when people view themselves digitally aged by decades, they are more likely to increase their contributions to retirement accounts. What if your avatar were to virtually gain weight? Most likely you would hit the gym straight away.

Blue Mars is a 3D virtual world platform enabling users to meet, chat and share their common digital experiences. Blue Mars Lite application goes one step further: Meet other avatars in real-world locations on Google Street View.

Research shows that chatbots stimulate a positive state of mind among their users. As a result users enjoy more pleasure in performing their activities and spend more time on performing them. According to ‘social response theory’, the ‘social cues’ send by chatbots increase the users’ involvement in interacting with a computer. As a consequence chatbots contribute to a more personal perception of the online experience.

Inf.net is a community of virtual talking characters (we call them “infs”). Users can create their own infs, design their appearance and then teach them and post on blogs, social networks and homepages. Infs are like chatbots but individual, customizable and look great

Recent research on context-aware computing, such as avatars, has shown many benefits for businesses. According to Virtuoz vice president Mark Gaydos there are 4 ways how avatar virtual agents can help companies (from allbusiness.com)

With James Cameron’s highly anticipated sci-fi movie Avatar opening this weekend, we had to find out if avatars can help businesses in the real world as much as they help humans in fictitious alien worlds.

Unlike the 10-foot tall blue avatars in Cameron’s movie, Web site avatars aren’t science fiction; they’re “real” virtual agents that provide customer service worldwide. These self-service software applications (which can appear as an animation or a picture of a real person) are intelligent, engaging personalities that help Internet customers find solutions faster and more efficiently.

The Michelin Man avatar, for example, not only answers questions about Michelin tires, but can also engage in conversations about how old he is and whether he has a girlfriend.