Text recognition news

Big Brother has a long history in the movies. One of the better known additions to the genre is “Enemy of the State”, a 1998 thriller directed by Tony Scott. I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen this movie, but it recently resurfaced on TV and the movie continues to entertain. However, fifteen years have taken a toll and the once-futuristic surveillance technology looks commonplace today — when the National Security Agency’s spy satellite zooms down to photograph a building, you immediately think of Google’s Street View.

The goal of psychology is to predict and control behavior. It is the same goal we have as knowledge engineers. This may sound somewhat Orwellian, but it is not about sinister machinations. In Artificial Solutions, we want to do everything possible to help users of our Teneo virtual assistants (VAs) quickly and conveniently find the way to the information they need. Since a VA is typically designed to answer a specific set of queries, we have a clear idea of which content should be covered. For example, it’s reasonable to expect that a VA on a bank’s website will be asked questions about banking, hence it will need to be an expert on transactions such as opening accounts and transferring money, but it is not reasonable to expect it to advise you which sofa to buy with the check you write. Anna knows every item that IKEA sells, but will be puzzled if you try to borrow money from her.

Yahoo!, Google and Bing launched revolutionary microdata format that will change the way search engines understand, analyze and categorize your site! Will that make a breakthrough in chatbot industry as well?

The video above presents Schema.org project, explaining its functionality on the basis of the word “avatar”. In fact, it is quite confusing, because the term ‘avatar’  can refer to the famous movie, a digital image representing a human, and also avatar in the form of conversational agent present on a website. Chatbots.org have already identified this term as a part of over 130 chatbots synonyms collection.

Emma, the virtual librarian, is getting some attention in Northeast Ohio media. This cute article appeared on Jan. 9 in the Mentor, Ohio Patch.

Online shoppers are easily overwhelmed by the large number of products, arcane technical specifications, and conflicting reviews. This is especially true for people buying a new computer. A New York-based startup SalesClark LLC wants to reduce shoppers’ information overload during this holiday season by employing a virtual shopping assistant.

SalesClark is a virtual assistant that chats with online shoppers in order to quickly find the best and cheapest fit for their needs. At www.salesclark.com, you can describe in plain English what you are looking for. For example, you can type “I need a small laptop good for traveling, writing, and checking e-mails.”

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.

This paper is about conversation, or how people talk, and the unit of analysis used to understand the organization of conversation, the turn. It is a product of empirical research and identifies the basic unit of analysis for analyzing and generating natural conversational interaction. It represents a new paradigm, an entirely new way to measure and quantify conversational patterns that are culture, language and gender independent.

It is one of a series of papers that will be published. It is the first paper leading up to the development of Natural Conversational Technology. A long list of potential applications will also be published, such as. how to teach intelligent devices to engage in conversational interaction as a human being or how to do opinion mining from dynamic text.

Download the first paper ‘The Organization of Conversation’

eGain Communications has just released Assistant 5.0, a conversational agent that can help Web site visitors search, solve problems and purchase items via typed exchanges in conversational English.

The company says the new virtual agent learns faster and more efficiently than its predecessors, automatically converting existing knowledge—typically in the form of FAQs—into the “cases” in its knowledge base with a claimed success rate of 90%, nearly double the previous rate. The company explains that a case is a set of questions such as “Do you accept credit cards?” “Which credit cards do you take?”, for which there is a unique answer, such as “We accept VISA, MasterCard and American Express.”

Recent research on context-aware computing, such as avatars, has shown many benefits for businesses. According to Virtuoz vice president Mark Gaydos there are 4 ways how avatar virtual agents can help companies (from allbusiness.com)

With James Cameron’s highly anticipated sci-fi movie Avatar opening this weekend, we had to find out if avatars can help businesses in the real world as much as they help humans in fictitious alien worlds.

Unlike the 10-foot tall blue avatars in Cameron’s movie, Web site avatars aren’t science fiction; they’re “real” virtual agents that provide customer service worldwide. These self-service software applications (which can appear as an animation or a picture of a real person) are intelligent, engaging personalities that help Internet customers find solutions faster and more efficiently.

The Michelin Man avatar, for example, not only answers questions about Michelin tires, but can also engage in conversations about how old he is and whether he has a girlfriend.

Ever realized that not only humans are culturally bounded, but virtual agents as well? Practices that are completely accepted in some cultures would totally be rejected by other cultures. Even when they are part of so-called viral campaigns, which tend to be a little bit shocking. However, at Chatbots.org we believe learning starts with openness and sharing. So be prepared!

We’ve stumbled upon Anna and Adam, virtual agents (chatbots or virtual assistants if you prefer) of Polish company Inpost. Both Anna and Adam can be undressed if you know the codes! In fact, for non-Polish speaking people, it would come across as a code; for Polish natives it’s about answering questions about Inpost’s new service called paczkomat. They learn by interacting with Anna or Adam.

In most cultures, this kind of practice would be highly unusual for established brands like InPost. Note that Inpost is not a silly new web startup: They are the first company in Poland offering postal services throughout the country via its own units, represented in 200 cities of Poland via 800 Customer Service Points. Inpost is part of the Integer.pl group which is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Anna was developed by a large virtual agent developer in Poland named Stanusch Technologies.

Wanna undress Anna or Adam yourself or checkout the video? Click below for the codes.