Market news

Aetna announced the availability of an online assistant to help members who have questions about how to navigate Aetna’s secure member website. “Ann,” Aetna’s personalized, virtual assistant, offers 24-hour support for members who are new to the website or need help logging in. Members receive the same responsive service from Ann that they receive when calling customer service, but without leaving the website. Ann is interactive and easily interprets members’ questions, helping them with the registration process or with recovering forgotten user names or passwords.

VirtuOz  announced the deployment of a virtual agent solution on the PayPal Germany site. VirtuOz agents are now available on four PayPal country sites, including the United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, with plans to launch an agent in Australia in the near future.

“Because they’re dealing with financial transactions, PayPal wants to ensure its customers receive a superior confidence-building experience,” said Alexandre Lebrun, co-founder and CEO, VirtuOz. “The expanded use of the VirtuOz virtual agent at PayPal Germany reinforces the value our solution provides PayPal.”

The PayPal Germany virtual agent is named Eva, and she assists customers in German, marking the third language PayPal has rolled out with VirtuOz.

The Chatbots 3.0 conference in Philadelphia was a huge success.  We had about 25 attendees and 11 high quality presentations. A number of people who were unable to attend have made requests to see the presentations.  We have asked the speakers to submit links to their talks so that you can view them.

Richard Wallace, Pandorabots - Pandorabots overview (ppt, windows, mac, PDF)

An increasing number of Fortune500 companies have started to use Virtual Agents - Avatars to enhance their customer experience and decrease eCommerce drop rates.

Register NOW for this unique 60min web event - webinar - to learn about Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know Regarding Contemporary, Enterprise Avatars (but did not have the opportunity to ask).

• How are Virtual Agents used by top-tier companies like Comcast?
• How this tech enhances service and eCommerce platforms?
• How much an intelligent Avatar costs?
• Can I have my CEO as a customized Avatar?

Watch Forrester, Comcast and InteliWISE answer these and many more key questions, by attending a complimentary webinar (on May 19, 2010 at 11:00 am PDT, 2:00 pm EDT).

Since 1956 researchers have studied AI and their various specializations. However, this research was based on a couple of assumptions which are due for a rigorous revision. Previously, many AI solutions have attempted to solve all the problems with one system or function rather than multiple systems working together as in the human mind. The mind, memory and body function work both together and separately to solve any number of problems, and the way they work together (and alone) varies from problem to problem. The human mind alone applies various systems and functions to any given problem. Also, researchers have developed models that work more like computers, where everything is either one or zero. Real memory is filled with gray areas, ambiguities and inconsistencies, but functions in spite of not always being congruent.

Therefore, MIT is revisiting their Mind Machine Project with an initial $5 million grant and a five-year timetable to rebuild the AI field from scratch.

VirtuOz expanded its enterprise relationship with eBay to provide intelligent customer support on eBay.com. The VirtuOz solution, which is already on eBay’s sites in France (named Louise), Germany, the United Kingdom and United States, will be rolled out to other eBay Web sites.

IVA-2010 is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main forum for presenting research on modeling, developing and evaluating intelligent virtual agents with a focus on communicative abilities and social behavior. The conference encourages a spectrum of presentations from theoretical issues to working applications. Researchers in human-human and human-robot interaction are also welcome to share work relevant to intelligent virtual agents.

Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are (in the definition of the organisation) interactive characters that exhibit human-like qualities and communicate with humans or with each other using natural human modalities such as behavior, gesture and speech. IVAs are capable of real-time perception, cognition and action that allow them to participate in a dynamic social environment.

It is being held September 20-22, 2010, in Philadelphia, USA.

Last year I’ve attended the conference in Amsterdam and it was awesome! Truely awesome. You can still expect our report on Chatbots.org, which in a more academic context than we currently present ourselves. The realtime emotion aware parameterized avatar system of Steve DiPaola was a video report of things we’ve experienced in Amsterdam. Furthermore, we’ve attened the IVA GALA 2009 awards and we’ll soon make sure the participants and winners are uploaded to the 2009 page of IVA GALA. It’s all coming up!

2010 will be a great year for the virtual agent/chatbot researchers and businesses!

VirtuOz, the provider of virtual agent solutions, announced today that the company grew rapidly in 2009, posting record sales as a result of accelerated new customer adoption and expanded use of VirtuOz at existing customers in both North America and Europe.

Found on GetAFreeLancer.com: ChatBots – a small research project, job for a freelancer. Write a chatbot based on Elize. Write a report. Earn marks, whatever that may be. More below.

Efficient online self-service is essential for online retailers—particularly since 57% of U.S. online consumers say they are very likely to abandon an online purchase if they cannot find quick answers to their questions, says a new Forrester Research Inc. report.

Virtual agents represent an efficient option to bolster a company’s self-service options, particularly since they reduce customer service operational costs by deflecting agent-assisted costs because they lower the number of customers who call a contact center. Virtual agents—typically with a digitalized human appearance—are software services that provide automated assistance by simulating a two-way conversation in which they can help customers do anything from perform online tasks to locate online information.