Word of the Day: artificial personality (AP)

Word of the Day Daily updates on the latest technology terms |March 9, 2018

artificial personality (AP) An artificial personality (AP) is a collection of characteristics, tendencies and behavioral quirks assigned to a chatbot, digital assistant, robot or video game character. A primary goal of adding personality to digital entities is to encourage end users to interact with programming on an emotional, as well as a logical, level. Personalities are especially significant for voice-activated digital assistants such as Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana because they are intended to take the place of human assistants. Google has hired a creative team to give its unnamed assistant personality, while Siri was purposely designed early on to be a little sassy. Cortana was modeled after real-life celebrity personal assistants and Alexa now offers a skill that allows her to be disrespectful. People don't expect their digital assistant to pass the Turing test and be mistaken for a human being, but developers have found that the addition of personality quirks is something end users seem to appreciate. Typically, humor is used to redirect the user's attention from programming deficiencies.   While the ability of an AP to whisper, pause for emphasis or adjust pitch has allowed the program to seem more conversational, designers actually have to be careful not to make the personality seem too human and create an effect known as "uncanny valley." The effect is named for the way the viewer's level of comfort drops as a simulation approaches, but does not reach, verisimilitude. Quote of the Day "While AI-fueled assistants are popping up everywhere, from home assistants to internet retail sites, the ability to engage in a natural dialogue remains evasive." - Ed Burns   Trending Terms chatbot digital assistant Siri Turing test uncanny valley Alexa Voice Services   Learning Center AI experts advise developers on dev tools Developers must keep up with advancements in AI, as a new generation of tools provides developers with advanced capabilities, a group of AI experts said. Chatbot applications must get better at chatting to engage users Today's chatbot applications are good order takers, but tomorrow's should be more conversational in order to be real game-changers, experts say. To work for us, AI virtual assistants need to speak, see like humans For AI virtual assistants to become truly useful, conversational technologies need to perfect a bot's ability to see and hear, said Forrester's Julie Ask. Who's talking? Conversational agent vs. chatbot vs. virtual assistant IBM Watson VP and CTO Rob High explains the distinction between a chatbot, a conversational agent and a virtual assistant. AI functionality limited today but could be a game-changer Today's limited and overhyped AI functionality could soon give way to technology that is truly transformative for enterprises. Writing for Business Because time is limited, please hold your questions ____ after the robot demonstration. a. till b. 'til Answer   Stay In Touch For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com   Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed!   FOLLOW US About This E-Newsletter This e-newsletter is published by the TechTarget network. To unsubscribe from Whatis.com, click here. Please note, this will not affect any other subscriptions you have signed up for. TechTarget, Whatis, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466. Contact: webmaster@techtarget.com Copyright 2018 TechTarget. All rights reserved.