Lifelike Computer Characters: The Persona Project at Microsoft Research

  • Gene Ball ,
  • ,
  • David Kurlander ,
  • John Miller ,
  • David Pugh ,
  • Tim Skelly ,
  • Andy Stankosky ,
  • David Thiel ,
  • Maarten Van Dantzich ,
  • Trace Wax

Published by American Association for Artificial Intelligence

Publication

This article describes the Persona project at Microsoft Research, which is exploring social user interfaces that employ an explicity anthropomorphic character to interact with the user in a natural spoken dialogue. The prototype system described here integrates spoken language input, a simple conversational dialogue manager, reactive 3D animation, speech output and sound effects to creat Peedy the Parrot, a conversational assistant who accepts user requests for audio CDs and then plays them.