A demonstration of audiovisual sensitive artificial listeners

Abstract

Sensitive artificial listeners (SAL) are virtual dialogue partners who, despite their very limited verbal understanding, intend to engage the user in a conversation by paying attention to the user's emotions and non-verbal expressions. The SAL characters have their own emotionally defined personality, and attempt to drag the user towards their dominant emotion, through a combination of verbal and non-verbal expression. The demonstrator shows an early version of the fully autonomous SAL system based on audiovisual analysis and synthesis.