27/04-11   -   Press releases

Chatbots.org publishes virtual human AI research area

A virtual human is an artificial avatar with conversational skills, able to hold conversations with human beings. It is the field of conversational artificial intelligence. Although the field of humanlike conversational AI is highly promising, it is also being kept unnecessarily slow, as information is hard to find, due to the wide variety of terminology used to address the very same phenomenon. As an example, a virtual human is also known as a virtual agent, chat bot, or virtual assistant.
In order to address this issue, Chatbots.org has now launched the largest artificial intelligence research area, specialized on humanlike conversational AI, in the world. With 1,031 academic journals, 13,067 universities, 163 books, 327 annual academic events, 475 publishers and loads of academic papers, the research and business community is immediately the de facto portal for information in this area.

The academic and business community has worked for more than 18 months on this area. University data from various internet sources has been enriched with data from university websites, WHOIS information and manual desk research. The library contains books, e-books and other publications. Additionally, the ‘related journal’ area covers all academic magazines which have published relevant papers related to virtual agent technology. The next section specialized on research papers contains a modest start, with (abstracts of) papers from the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents. At last, the most relevant academic events are plotted on a calendar. Now that the research tab is visible to everyone, the wider community can contribute and add their content to the website.

The scope of the research area narrows down to the scope of Chatbots.org, to humanlike conversational AI; it is about replicating conversational skills of intelligent humans, both verbal and non-verbal and about creating a humanlike intelligent avatars. Biometric research is included, because the virtual human needs to recognize a human in order to continue a previous conversation; animation, speech technology and natural language processing research because the avatars need to be visualized, have a humanlike synthetic voice and on top to be able to recognize our voices as well. Behavioural studies, including Psychology and Sociology, are added because behavior of the agent can only feel ‘natural’ when behavior of humans is well understood. And economic research is in scope as virtual assistants will really impact the way companies and consumers will interact.

Various sub communities will benefit from this brand new research section. Researchers and students from universities can access a selection of papers, journals and events in this field without searching immense library databases, and smaller universities will profit especially. Businesses working on their virtual assistants can connect with universities setting up projects. Last, but not least, individuals working on their personal chat bot implementation will be inspired by great insights provided by researchers.

Chatbots.org continues its mission to advance humanlike conversational AI, guiding society in the acceptance of virtual humans, worldwide.

Read more about this exciting field at Chatbots.org, or access the research section at: http://www.chatbots.org/research

About Chatbots.org
Chatbots.org is the leading community on humanlike conversational artificial intelligence, such as virtual assistants, virtual humans, chat bots and avatars. With more than 10,000 members; academics, businesses and individuals, it helps to advance the industry for all involved with virtual humans.

Join the community today at: http://www.chatbots.org