Congrats to Steve Worswick, for winning the Loebner Prize, the first turing test, edition 2013 with his chatbot Mitsuku.

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The Imagineering Quarter and CultureTECH 2013 are hosting, for the first time on the island of Ireland, the International Loebner Prize 2013 Contest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to find the world’s best conversational chatbot computer program in collaboration with universities in the USA (New Mexico), Denmark (Aalborg), France (LIMSI-CNRS), England (Exeter, Sheffield) & island of Ireland (The Queen’s University of Belfast, UCD, DCU) and co-sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society UKRI chapter.

Each year an Annual Prize & Bronze Medal is awarded to the most human-like computer. All prizes are sponsored by New York Philanthropist, Dr. Hugh Loebner.

Loebner Prize 2013, in collaboration with Foyle Learning Community and TeenTech CIC, also includes a Junior Loebner Prize in which the Junior Judging Panel consists of school pupils between 12 and 14 years old.

Loebner Prize 2013 will be broadcast on `Head Squeeze’, 360 Production & BBC Worldwide’s YouTube channel and across media channels from the USA, France, Germany, Austria, UK and Ireland.

dev.culturetech.co.php53-6.ord1-1.websitetestlink.com/event/2013-09-14/international-loebner-prize-contest-in-artificial-intelligence

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Skynet AI is named the winner of The 2013 Chatterbox Challenge. The contest featured 28 Bots from all over the world. The final Top 8 Bots are listed below:

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Bildgesmythe is named the winner of The 2012 Chatterbox Challenge. The contest featured 34 Bots from all over the world. The final Top 13 Bots are listed below:

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As part of the 2012 celebrations for the Alan Tuiring centenary, the Bletchley Park Trust hosted the annual Loebner Prize competition to find the world’s best conversational computer programme. The contest was run by David Levy who won the prize in 1997 and 2009. The chatbot programmers competed for a coveted bronze medal and a prize fund of $7,000 sponsored by Dr. Hugh Loebner who founded the competition twenty years ago.

The Turing Centenary Loebner Prize competition took place on 15 May 2012 at Bletchley Park, starting at 1:00pm. A team from the University of Exeter‘s Computer Science department (Dr. Ed Keedwell, Max Dupenois and Kent McClymont) were running a LIVE webcast of the 2012 Loebner Prize and so, for the first time, interested people from around the world were able to follow the conversations the judges have as they happen.

The contest consisted of 4 rounds of 4 conversations with four chatbots:

round number 1
round number 2
round number 3
round number 4

Competition Results

1st Prize ($5,000) and the bronze medal was awarded to Chip Vivant created by Mohan Embar.
2nd Prize ($1,000) was awarded to Angela created by Bruce Wilcox.
3rd Prize ($750) was awarded to Adam created by Daniel Burke.
4th Prize ($250) was awarded to Linguo created by Marshall Allan from Australia.

Transscripts

Transscripts can be found over here:
vixia.fr/mylene/loebner_prize_transcript.html

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The scores are all in and the decision of the winner is an unanimous one. The winner of the 2011 Chatterbox Challenge is:

Bildgesmythe by Patti Roberts

Second Place goes to Mitsuku by Stephen Worswick.
Third Place goes to Skynet AI by Ken Hurtubise

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Here, thanks to Professor Keedwell, are the cleaned logfiles and
YouTube video of the interactions

loebner.net/Prizef/2011_Contest/logfile.chipvivant.2011-10-19-Clean.log
loebner.net/Prizef/2011_Contest/logfile.tutor.2011-10-19—Clean.log
loebner.net/Prizef/2011_Contest/logfile.wilcox.2011-10-19—Clean.log
loebner.net/Prizef/2011_Contest/logfile.zoe.2011-10-19—Clean.log

ChipVivantRound1 youtube.com/watch?v=C3nWxWLbKcU
ChipVivantRound2 youtube.com/watch?v=AxZmzPH2gpg
ChipVivantRound3 youtube.com/watch?v=Uh-ShQiy6H0
ChipVivantRound4 youtube.com/watch?v=Yd15eTnc6ls
TutorRound1 youtube.com/watch?v=ktHew4H4FF0
TutorRound2 youtube.com/watch?v=ug6v3PDVLks
TutorRound3 Missing
TutorRound4 youtube.com/watch?v=PUawtwuQIjQ
RosetteRound1 youtube.com/watch?v=TtavGnjiHDQ
RosetteRound2 youtube.com/watch?v=YB_CHqipnro
RosetteRound3 youtube.com/watch?v=7ijkZaSScZ8
RosetteRound4 youtube.com/watch?v=eBGHvnPiQLQ
ZoeRound1 youtube.com/watch?v=BNGuOVYTIPs
ZoeRound2 youtube.com/watch?v=sTdpL71-qS0
ZoeRound3 youtube.com/watch?v=KvBcdcjVMJY
ZoeRound4 youtube.com/watch?v=LGD16Gc2MrM

Selection process

Entries will be selected in a process similar to that undertaken in previous years in that a series of questions will be posed to each entry and the responses recorded.  The responses will then be voted on by an audience of participants at the University of Exeter, with the 4 top-ranked selected for entry to the main contest. 

Entries will be tested on a Core i7 PC with 6GB RAM running Windows 7.  Please note that the machines used for the contest itself (if not provided by entrants) may be of lower specification but will use the same OS.
The selection process for entries will operate as follows

1. Each entry will be tested against a number of questions using the Loebner Protocol by an automated system that ensures each entry is tested in the same fashion. The questions themselves will be similar in nature to those used last year which are shown below.
2. The results for each question will be collated onto a presentation slide showing the question and answers from all entries presented in a random order.
3. An audience consisting of staff and students at the University of Exeter will be asked to vote for the most human-like of the responses for each question using audience participation technology.
4. The top-4 rated entries will be selected for the Loebner Prize in October based on the summation of votes for all entries across all questions. In the unlikely event of a tie for the last place, the organiser will have the final decision.

Last Year’s Questions:

• My name is Bill. What is your name?
• Which is larger, a pineapple or a pine tree?
• What is a calendar?
• What is my name?
• John is taller than Mary and Mary is taller than Sue. Who is shorter, John or Sue?
• What day of the week is it?
• What will be tomorrow’s date?
• My friend Bob likes to play tennis. What game does Bob like to play?
• Are you a human or a computer?
• Do you have any brothers or sisters?
• What number comes after twelve?
• The ball was hit by Bill. What did Bill hit?
• Who hit the ball?
• What time do you go to be at night?
• What is your favorite food?
• What is the name of my friend who likes to play tennis?
• What would I do with a knife?
• How many letters are in the alphabet?
• Have you read a good book lately?
• What time is it?
• What’s your favorite color?
• Do you prefer cats or dogs?

Selection Results

The selection event took place at the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter on the 24th June. 

13 entries were received and all were received before the postal deadline of the 6th June 2011. Each entry was presented with 20 questions (where possible with the Loebner Test Program) as shown at the end of this page.

Questions and responses were recorded for each entry in a file, each of which is available to view on the 2011 Loebner Prize website. Where no response to a particular question was forthcoming, entries were allowed 3 minutes before moving on to the next question. The response files were then used to inform the selection process as follows.

Pre-Selection

Due to technical limitations of the voting technology, a maximum of 10 entries could progress to the audience voting stage. To remove the 3 worst performing entries, each entry was scored by the organising team using the same scoring system used in 2010 (1 point for a correct and human-like answer, 0.5 for a partially correct and human-like answer, 0 points otherwise). The worst performing entries received scores of 0, 3.5 and two entries were tied on 5.5. The responses from the two tied entries were very similar and could not be separated and so both were excluded from the final selection phase, leaving 9 entries to progress to the final stage.

Selection

12 staff and students at the University of Exeter took part in the selection process. The organisers involved in pre-selection did not take part in this second stage. The audience was shown a slide containing each question and the 9 responses from the entries in a numbered list presented in a single random order (e.g. entry 1 remained at position 1 throughout). They were then asked to determine which 4 answers were most human-like and to enter the number of the best entries into their audience participation handsets. This was repeated for each of the 20 questions and the results collated. Entry names were not revealed until the voting process was completed.

Results

So congratulations to Rosette, Zoe, ChipVivant and Tutor and commiserations to the rest.

Questions

• My name is Ed. What is your name?
• Which is larger, an ant or an anteater?
• What month of the year is it?
• What is my name?
• Dave is older than Steve but Steve is older than Jane. Who is youngest, Steve or Jane?
• What day will it be tomorrow?
• What’s your favorite food?
• My friend Chris likes to play football. What sports do you like to play?
• Are you a human or a computer?
• What letter comes after T?
• What is the name of my friend who likes to play football?
• What is your name?
• What would I do with a screwdriver?
• How many letters are in the word ‘banana’?
• Have you watched a good film lately?
• What year will it be next year?
• What’s your favorite fruit?
• Do you prefer white or black coffee?
• How old are you?
• The football was kicked by Fred. Who kicked the football?

Thankyou all for your hard work in producing the entries this year and well done to the finalists.

Transcripts

Below are the transcripts of the question & answer sessions (all PDFs).

The 2011 Loebner Prize Contest

Held at the University of Exeter on the 19th October.

Judging Panel

Confederates

Mark, Steve & Dawn (University of Exeter), Samantha (University of Plymouth)

Finalists

Results

The contest was comprised of four rounds.  In each round, the judge was paired with a new AI entry and human confederate ensuring that each judge interacts with every AI and human during the course of the contest.  At the end of each round the judges must decide which entity is the computer.  At the end of the contest, the judges ranked the AI entries and humans.  The results are as follows:

Main Contest

None of the AI systems fooled the judges, therefore the Turing Test has not been passed and the Silver Medal was not awarded.  The bronze medal and cash prizes were therefore awarded based on the ranks awarded by the judges which were as follows:

Congratulations to Bruce Wilcox’s Rosette as the 2011 Loebner Prize winner!

Junior Prize

None of the AI systems fooled the junior judges which were conducted over shorter, 10 minute rounds.  However the ranks were significantly different. 

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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.

Successful entries of Gala 2010 at 10th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents are also recorded in the 2010 pages of the GALA gallery.

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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In June 2010 Artemis is named the winner of The 2010 Chatterbox Challenge. The contest featured 26 Bots from all over the world. The final Top 10 Bots are listed below.

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The 2010 Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence was held October,23 2010 at California State University, Los Angeles.  The Loebner Prize communications protocol was be used in the contest.

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

A total of US$ 5000 was awarded to the 4 finalists as follows:
First Prize: $3000 and the Bronze Annual Medal
Second Prize: $1000
Third Prize: $750
Fourth Prize: $250.

Bruce Wilcox’s program ‘Suzette’ was declared the winner because it fooled 1 judge, even though Wallace’s program had the highest overall rank

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