Research News & Events

The idea of a conversational artificial intelligence therapist is as old as ELIZA, the very first chatbot created in 1966, which emulated a client-centered therapy approach. New research on conversational agents revealed their effectiveness as Internet-based intervention tools that treat and even prevent depression.

Research conducted by Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) monitored what happened when a virtual agent was introduced to the website of it restaurant ‘Berceau des Sens’. We developed ‘Laura’ with the help of a computer service company named Askom. Laura is able to answer frequently asked questions, such as on menus and prices, making bookings, restaurant location, and opening hours; together with some more tricky queries, such as on children’s or special menus, and parking and Wi-Fi availability.

After months of hard work, we’re delighted to announce the new version of chatbots.org, creating a, in our opinion, world-class community platform for professional chatbot developers. We’re glad we’ve managed to implement so many wishes of chatbot developers world wide and we’ve added lots of functionality that we believe advances the chatbot community across the world.

Please read on about our tightened mission, the new functionality, new content, the history, the community, the future, and how your participation could help you create success, learn and get in touch with professional partners.

The benefits of the personalization and adaptation of computer applications to each user have been widely reported in recent decades. Educational applications are not an exception, both in e-learning, i.e. the use of electronic media to teach or assess, and b-learning blended learning), i.e. to combine traditional face-to-face instruction with electronic media.

Pedagogic Conversational Agents (PCAs) can be defined as virtual characters, which can teach or be taught by students in a domain, and even to serve as learner companions to void the so-called isolation problem of computer-based education. PCAs can be animated, and may consist only of a face, or have a full body (embodied conversational agents). Given that the educational application keeps a learner model, the PCA could use this to adapt the information presented to the user. It is therefore expected that the interaction will not only be more natural, but also more efficient, because it will be focused on the needs and preferences of each student.

Call for papers: International Workshop on Adaptation and Personalization in E-B/Learning using Pedagogic Conversational Agents June 21th, 2010, Hawaii, USA.

Cassandra is our “Figure of Speech”, a title that nicely represents who and what she is.  ejTalk’s mission from the very beginning has been to focus on the basic elements of conversation instead of developing products to accomplish a singular task.  Most conversational agents today serve a particular purpose.  They talk about specific topics but do not communicate in very conversational ways.

ejTalk takes the opposite approach with Cassandra by laying a foundation for the basic principles of day-to-day speech that will one day allow her to talk about anything.  Take the example of a greeting: There are many ways to introduce oneself to another person.  We may say “hello” to a person we have just met, but to a friend we will say “hey” or “hi.”  It may seem like a trivial distinction, but to the human ear, the effect is highly noticeable.

Cassandra’s entry in the SpeechTEK Europe Avatar Challenge.

Researchers from Blavatnik School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University led by Professor Yishay Mansour are developing artificial intelligence algorithm in order to equip machines with human emotions. According to this algorithm based on machine learning, the computer programs are taught a sense of “regret” and how to “feel sorry” for their mistakes.

According to scientists, it is possible that computers understand human emotional state. The algorithm allowing computers to recognize real person’s emotions and feelings will be used in fields such as biomedicine, law enforcement and computer science.

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have recently demonstrated that a computer can decode brain signals to infer the intentions of a human thoughts. From now on, people can “talk within their minds” to a computer in order to control it. How the act of human mind reading, usually associated with science-fiction literature, is actually possible?

Researchers from Human Centered Multimedia at the University of Augsburg developed a virtual character which is capable of recognizing and displaying the emotion of a user.

Don’t be surprised if your child creates his/her first conversational agent earlier than you! Researchers from DevTech Research Group at Tufts University made it possible…