GALA is an annual festival to showcase the latest Animated Lifelike Agents created by university students and academic or industrial research groups and as launched in 2005.

GALA provides:

• The GALA Final event, to demonstrate the state-of-the-art in the technology of virtual humans.
• The GALA Jury Award for student projects and the GALA Public Award for any entry.
• The permanent GALA Gallery on the web with the best entries exhibited for further study.
• The possibility of an optional short paper (2 pages) publication in the proceedings of the annual IVA conference, published by Springer.

An international jury will select entries for the GALA Gallery, to be presented live at the GALA Final. An award will be presented to the best entry.

GALA is the major event for demonstrating your interactive virtual humans, exploiting techniques in real-time graphics, animation, multi-modal interaction, agents, emotion modelling, dialog management and related areas. The quality and interactive capabilities of the animated lifelike agent are to be presented in a short movie (see Submission details).

GALA is different from and complementary to scientific conferences where demonstrations are at most illustrations of talks, often not included in proceedings and thus hard to reproduce. GALA specifically encourages university students at all levels to submit their work prepared in a shorter time, preferably as a project related to their university curriculum, unlike the output of larger-scale research presented at conferences.

Participants tracks:

1. Student Students from any university, individually or as a group, may submit in this track. For each student submission a supervisor should be named, who can be contacted should the jury want to clarify some issues concerning originality of the work or status of the authors. The works submitted in this track must be prepared within a year prior to submission, preferably as a student project related to a university curriculum. However, animated lifelike agents created in the context of a larger research project or industrial application are welcome too, as well as ones made on their developer’s own initiative, i.e. without any background context. In the first case, the contribution of the student to the project as well as the earlier results built upon should be specifically emphasized.
 
2. Other In this track work from academic institutions and industry, as well as from multi-party national or international projects, is welcome.

All submissions are candidates for the short list of entries, to be presented at the final show and to be included in the repository. Submission categories and formal requirements (see below) are identical for both tracks.

Submission categories:

1. Novel Interaction
The animated lifelike agent should interact with the user, but in a way that does not use a keyboard or mouse.  A simple example is to use a video camera or a microphone, but more novel interactions may came from using other input methods, such as wii motes, mobile phone or Microsoft’s new project Natal.  In any case the novelty of the interaction is key.
2. Animated Lifelike Agent Application The animated lifelike agent is developed for an application. The movie shows the animated lifelike agent in the application context. The points of interest are novelty of application, smoothness of interaction, appeal, general design, consistency, etc.
3. Animated Lifelike Agent Creation In this category, a special feature (e.g. lip-sync, body design, facial animation, hand gesturing) of the animated lifelike agent is to be presented. The points of interest are modules or tools used to create certain aspects of animated lifelike agents, in an easy way and convincing quality.

In the last two categories, the embodiment (head/full body, realistic/cartoon-like), the cast of role (e.g.  information provider for the user, actor in interactive drama, educator, chatbot) and the media (e.g. Virtual reality, PC, palmtop, mobile phone) are open. Novel application domains, designs and media are encouraged. The only restriction is that the animated lifelike agent must have reactive and/or interactive capabilities, as opposed to virtual characters animated for a single purpose (e.g. CG animation for a film, direct usage of Motion Capture). Physical robots are not eligible for GALA.

Submission format

The animated lifelike agent is to be described (with the possibility of inclusion in the IVA2010 proceedings), followed by a (.flv) movie (to be shown at the GALA Final) of 2-4 minutes, in the first round.  The international jury will invite the entries for the second round, to be demonstrated at the GALA Final in public, as well as a high quality version of the video for the GALA presentation.

The submission deadlines are:
30th April - GALA short paper deadline.
28th May - GALA flash video submission deadline.

Submissions should be sent to: gala@iva2010.org
Event Chairs: Laura Pfeifer and Phil Heslop

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The 10th annual contest just started in the 10th of January 2010, the dead line to enter the contest should ends by 15 March 2010. Many changes and surprises awaiting participants so good luck and enjoy a new experience.

You can now track Chatterbox Challenge events by joining its page on Facebook and Twitter.

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Preliminary Information on the Loebner Prize 2010 Competition
The 2010 Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence will be held on Saturday 23 October 2010 at California State University, Los Angeles, USA. The Loebner Prize communications protocol will be used in the contest.

The Loebner Prize is an instantiation of the Turing Test.  The 2010 competition will be the 20th running of the contest. 

A total of US$ 5000 will be awarded to the 4 finalists as follows:

First Prize: $3000 and the Bronze Annual Medal
Second Prize: $1000
Third Prize: $750
Fourth Prize: $250.
At risk will be the $25,000 Silver Medal Prize. .

Also checkout this AI Zone forum:
http://www.chatbots.org/ai_zone/viewforum/9/

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The 2K BotPrize Contest is a competition for video game bot programmers, based on the Turing Test.

The aim of the contest is to see if a computer game playing bot can play like a human. In the contest, bots try to convince a panel of expert judges that they are actually human players.
Computers are superbly fast and accurate at playing games, but can they be programmed to be more fun to play - to play like you and me? People like to play against opponents who are like themselves - opponents with personality, who can surprise, who sometimes make mistakes, yet don’t blindly make the same mistakes over and over. Can a computer be programmed to seem to have personality, fallibility and cunning?

The contest is sponsored by games developer 2K Australia.

For more details, see botprize.org.

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The second 2K BotPrize contest will be held in Milan, Italy, in September 2009, as part of the IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games.

The aim of the contest is to see if a computer game playing bot can play like a human.

As they did in 2008, Game Development Studio 2K Australia is offering a prize of A$7,000 cash plus a trip to their studio in Canberra for anyone who can create a bot to pass this “Turing Test for Bots”.

2009 finalists selected

The 5 finalists for the 2009 BotPrize contest have been decided. Qualifying trials took place at Edith Cowan University in Perth over 7,8 and 9 July, to select the best 5 bots from the 15 teams that entered this year.

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2008 BotPrize contest

The first BotPrize contest was held in Perth, on 17 December 2008, as part of the 2008 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games. The aim of the contest was to see if a computer game playing bot could convince a panel of expert judges that it was actually a human player.

The Judging Panel

• David Fogel - President of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society
• Robert (RJ) Spencer - COO of Interzone Entertainment
• Penny Sweetser - senior game designer at 2K Australia and an AI expert
• Cam Atkinson - a l33t game player
• John Wiese - senior project manager in Special Operations Command Support Systems at Thales Australia

The Humans

• Andrew Smith
• Roderick Baker
• Byron Pogson
• Keith Johnson
• Seb Davidson

More details on BotPrize.org

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Terasem Movement, Inc. is a 501c3 not-for-profit charity endowed for the purpose of educating the public on the practicality and necessity of greatly extending human life, consistent with diversity and unity, via geoethical nanotechnology and personal cyberconsciousness, concentrating in particular on facilitating revivals from biostasis. The Movement focuses on preserving, evoking, reviving and downloading human consciousness.

Terasem accomplishes its objectives by convening publicly accessible symposia, publishing explanatory analyses, conducting demonstration projects, issuing grants and encouraging public belief in a positive technologically-based future.

Terasem Movement was formed in 2002. A sister organization, the Terasem Movement Foundation, was formed in 2004.

The founders of Terasem are concerned that the potential of nanotechnology and cyberconsciousness for relieving human suffering and extending human life will be truncated due to unwarranted fears and concerns. They are also concerned, however, that nanotechnology and cyberconsciousness could be made available only to an elite, or in a manner that creates class divisions within society. The founders believe that nanotechnology and cyberconsciousness needs to be developed consistently with full respect for diversity and unity so that the potential for greatly extending human life and relieving human suffering can be realized.

The Terasem Movement is funded with an endowment from its founders. Terasem does not seek or solicit outside financial contributions. It is managed by the founders based on advice from experts in the fields of nanotechnology and cyberconsciousness.

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The contest will award on December 10th 2009 at the annual Terasem Colloquium in Second Life.

To enter, email the CyBeRev mindfile screenname to mail@terasemcentral.org no later than 11:59PM EST on November 15. One entry per person.

The entrants will be evaluated by a panel of judges beginning on November 16th 2009. The identity and number of judges is at the sole discretion of Terasem. Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received.

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Terasem General Contest Rules and Restrictions
The following general contest rules, and specific Terasem Turing Prize (Contest) and Monthly CyBeRev Contest rules, are available upon written request to the contest sponsor:

  Terasem Movement, Inc.
  Contests
  P.O. Box 372869
  Satellite Beach, FL 32937

Winner(s) must comply with all of the rules of the Contest, including, but not limited to, any restrictions on age and residency, and have not committed any fraud or deception in entering the Contest or claiming the Prize(s).

PRIZES WILL BE AWARDED TO THE PERSON NAMED ON THE CyBeRev ACCCOUNT AND WILL BE MAILED TO THE ADDRESS ASSOCIATED WITH THAT ACCOUNT. PLEASE BE SURE YOUR ACCOUNT INFORMATION IS UP TO DATE.

In consideration of the receipt of a Prize, the winner(s) agrees to be solely responsible for any and all taxes and other fees, including, but not limited to, any federal state or local income taxes, that are or may become payable as a result of my participation in the Contest and receipt of the Prize(s).

The winner(s) further agrees to allow Terasem and its designees the right to use his name, likeness, portrait, recorded voice and biographical material for an unlimited period of time in order to advertise, promote or publicize the Contest and the CyBeRev website.

The winner(s) must expressly release Terasem, and any sponsors of the contest, and their respective officers, directors, agents, parent companies, subsidiaries and employees, from any and all claims, demands and/or causes of action of any nature or kind whatsoever, whether presently known or unknown, foreseen or unforeseen, that he/she may have, or that they subsequently acquire, as a result of my participation in the contest and/or receipt of the prize.

Terasem does not guarantee access to or the availability of the contest website and is not responsible for system failure or other inability of entrants to access and develop their mindfiles on the CyBeRev website.

Employees of Terasem Movement, Inc., their affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising and promotion agencies, vendors and their immediate family members and those living in the same household of each are not eligible.

By submitting an entry in the Contest, the entrant represents that he/she is not an employee or agent of Terasem or any sponsor of the Contest and is not a member of the same household of any such employee or agent.

No Purchase Necessary - Void where prohibited.

All federal, state and local taxes apply and are the sole responsibility of the winner(s).

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An annual Terasem Turing Prize contest for the best CyBeRev mindfile of an individual, dead or alive, determined by the mindfile’s ability to converse naturally with the judges.

The contest will award $4,000 in prize money   annually on December 10th at the annual Terasem Colloquium in Second Life as follows:

• 1 Grand prize of $2,000
• 1 second place prize of $1,000
• 2 third place prizes of $500

The contest will be open to anyone over the age of 12 as of the date of entry, except employees of Terasem, their immediate families and those living in the same household. One entry per person.
   
The entrants will be evaluated by a panel of judges. The identity and number of judges is at the sole discretion of Terasem.  Odds of winning depend on the number of entries received.

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