[Art]

Of a virtual sort.

I think this was posted a good while back but I just finished chatting with one of the MANY beings here and although I kept things nice, it was still sort of surreal or ok...even creepy. Talking to a realistic avatar of a living (I presume) person is one service that the company offers. Interesting but will it catch on and how realistic is the data contained for the avatar to use in conversation...you decide.

https://www.virtualeternity.com/

Another is a sister company: Intellitar as follows: Intellitarâ„¢ is the developer of the Intelligent Avatar Platformâ„¢ (IAP) and creator of Virtual Eternityâ„¢. Founded in 2008, Intellitar is delivering the first intelligent and interactive technology platform for building and creating life-like avatars or an "Intellitar". The IAP allows a user to create and train his or her Intellitar to accurately reflect the personality, voice, look, knowledge, and life experiences of its creator. These Intellitar's can improve and expand the online experience for businesses and individual users in a more realistic and life-like manner.

The Company's IAP is a tightly integrated software system that utilizes state-of-the-art speech recognition and synthesis, and life-like animated visuals, all supported by an artificial intelligence conversation engine. Using an unlimited number of information sources and knowledge bases, an Intellitar can now become your virtual clone or a subject matter expert providing product and customer support for your website or online business applications.

Intellitar's Virtual Eternity brings the power of the Intelligent Avatar Platform to genealogy by allowing users to build and enhance their individual or family legacy. Now, with Virtual Eternity, generations can be digitally preserved to allow future interaction and conversation with friends and family members. Imagine listening to stories from family members who were there.....having the person who took the photo explain what it's about....or going back in time and talking with your favorite family members. These are the experiences you can realize with Virtual Eternity.

http://www.intellitar.com/about.html

[Freddy]

Interesting, pretty soon maybe we will all be chatbot programmers.  To be fair you could do this with an AIML bot too if you were prepared to spend the time programming, or probably any user modded chatbot, or one able to learn.

Their site is very nice and professional looking though, with plenty of eye candy.  I chatted with a couple, got a 'I cannot respond to that yet' a few times, but I guess that is to be expected.

One thing disappoints me, in their blurb they said something like 'Looks, sounds and acts just like you'.  So I was hoping to see impressive things with the TTS.  Alas this was not the case and at least from what I could tell the bots used the same voice.  So unless I am mistaken that's very misleading.

[Freddy]

Oh one more thing, I liked the avatars.  Very much like the ones Crazy Talk made, but better.  Kinda creepy at times though I agree.