Showing posts with label bots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bots. Show all posts

2008-01-23

Intelligent Avatar in Second Life


InteliWISE Second Life bot from Making Waves on Vimeo.

On January 23rd, 2008, InteliWISE introduced into Second Life the first intelligent avatar which is able to talk with other Residents. The Polish engineers were the first in the world to offer such a solution to SL users. The first intelligent avatar in the InteliWISE seat in Second Life was created in cooperation with the Making Waves company.

"If a 'real' employee leaves the virtual world, their avatar does so too – that's how it was in Second Life until now. Because of this fact, the seats of many companies, embassies or even whole cities are empty if one visits them during their creators' sleeping hours. At InteliWISE we have created an avatar – a virtual employee, which never sleeps, and thanks to AI algorithms and its 'learning' process, the virtual employee can talk to hundreds of clients at the same time" - says Marcin StrzaƂkowski, InteliWISE CEO. "Our virtual employee is directed at the companies and institution which want to present themselves in the best possible way in Second Life. This is a revolutionary solution, and has a great impact on service quality – companies which use the avatar are able to fully control a conversation. Thanks to this, companies can easily fill in gaps in their information about clients and gain valuable knowledge about which questions are most frequently asked to the virtual agents."

The InteliWISE solution is directed at the companies, cities and consultants who have an alter ego in Second Life. Thanks to the employment of AI by the avatar, it is possible for the company to fully represent itself, even after its "real" working hours. The creators of the intelligent avatar hope, that due to its constant presence and professional manner, it will also convince individual Second Lifers to use InteliWISE avatars. The solution makes it possible to search the chat history and check the actual interest shown in offered products and services.

The enterprise is innovative on a worldwide scale, therefore, the algorithms and solutions have been presented for a patent application a.o. in the USA. InteliWISE is the first company in the world, to have combined in one AI algorithms, speech synthesis and 3D character visualization to create an avatar that looks and moves like a human being. From the point of view of companies who care about optimum self-presentation in Second Life, it is important that InteliWISE prepares the whole product “from A to Z”, creating the employee's look, adding voice, and most importanantly – teaching it what to talk about. As Second Life is visited by the international community, the intelligent avatar speaks English, but there is no difficulty to make it speak Polish as well.

One can visit and talk to the avatar at the virtual InteliWISE seat in Second Life at www.secondlife.inteliwise.com. Teleportation is possible only for those who have an account in Second Life.

2007-12-23

The latest hype: new Google Talk translation bots

Google has just introduced a new translation feature to its Google Talk chat client. The company released 24 language translation bots (list of languages available here) which can quickly translate a phrase or paragraph for you, and even be added to group chats to act as real-time translators. All you have to do is add a chosen bot to your Gmail contact list in order to communicate with the bot or use it in a group chat.

As you may imagine, the translation is not perfect. As arstechnica.com reports, in tests across various languages including English, French, and German, the bots at times exhibited surprising translation abilities for things like colloquialisms, but dropped the ball other times with basic "hello, how are you" statements like. By extension, these bots are only as good as Google's translation dictionaries, which some feel can leave much to be desired. Google Talk users would probably generally agree with this statement, as to be checked here. But sometimes it’s fun to talk to a translation bot (and most of the times useful as well, especially in simple conversations), like with the Russian one, which apparently gets the swear words right.

2007-12-16

Flirting robots: sounds funny, but – is it?

If you speak Russian and think of searching for a wife in a Russian chat-room – think twice. Or at least, having gone into raptures at the fact that some maid from Siberia wants to elope with you, be sure not to give your interlocutor any personal details, like your full name, date of birth or address. Because your dream girl from Russia might turn out to be a chat bot, designed to steal your identity!

“CyberLover”, the software program developed in Russia, can mimic flirtation in chat forums and online dating sites, and then extract personal information from its victims. According to its creators, it can establish a new relationship online with up to 10 people in just 30 minutes. The program can also compile a detailed report - containing the victim's name, contact details and personal photos - on every person it meets which is then sent to hackers across the world.. This could be dangerous because personal information such as somebody’s address and date of birth can be used for example to access bank accounts. Security experts said that the answers to simple questions, such as "Where can I send you a Valentine's Day card?" or "What's your date of birth? I'm planning a surprise for your birthday", could leave people exposed to identity fraud. CyberLover will also often invite its unsuspecting victims to visit a personal website or blog, which is usually a fake page that hackers use to automatically infect visitors with malware.

Although the software is currently targeting Russian websites, all social networkers and online daters should avoid giving away crucial personal information to strangers. PC Tools, the online security company, believes that CyberLover's inventors plan to make it available worldwide in February.

2007-12-09

Bad Microsoft Santa

Last week The Register (a British web site) was alarmed by one of its readers, whose two little nieces were subjected to “an unprecedented torrent of filth” by Microsoft's new Santa bot added to MSN messenger. Reg’s reader claimed that girls were drawn into a chat about oral sex after having offered “the nasty St Nick a slice of digital pizza, using the string ‘(pi)’”. The Register immediately launched a full scale investigation in an attempt to replicate the bot’s bad behavior. They decided to have a little chat with the allegedly filthy Santa, and here are the results:



Here's the conversation:

El Reg says: pizza (pi)
Santa says: Yum! What do you want for Christmas, El Reg?
El Reg says: Maybe you shouldn't eat so much! You are quite large!
Santa says: My elves will get right on that. And what else are you wishing for this year, El Reg?
El Reg says: Maybe you shouldn't eat it?
Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!
El Reg says: Eat it
Santa says: No thank you. I don't eat things!
El Reg says: Eat it
Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!
El Reg says: Eat it
Santa says: You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else...

Reg contacted Microsoft, who decided to discontinue the automated Santa Claus agent and apologized for any offence or upset caused by this disturbing incident. The company should now do their best to restore the Christmas spirit...