Conversational Agents Replying with a Manzai-style Joke

Abstract

Automated conversational agents are becoming popular in various everyday contexts. In order to fulfill a more important role in human society, people would need to feel a sense of familiarity with such agents. To achieve this, we focus on humor, which enables familiar relationships between people and agents. In this study, we propose an interaction style of a pair of conversational agents that make humorous statements in conversation with users in real time, referring to the Japanese Manzai. In this method, a pair of agents, one making the joke and the other serving as the butt of the joke, perform humor in real time. The results of the experiment using the prototype system showed that when the agents performed humorous statements during conversations with users, the humans perceived that agent as expressing a sense of humor, and their motivation to continue the conversation increased.