Artificial Conversational Companions - A Requirements Analysis

This work is based on several attempts to provide a definition and a design approach of Artificial Companions that can be found in the referenced literature. We focus on computer agents that simulate human language behaviour and are aimed to serve, to assist and to accompany their owner over a long period of time, that we call Artificial Conversational Companions. Although accepted by the research community, the visions set very high expectations of such agents, but they do not address the technical feasibility and the system limitations. This is the first approach to define a set of features that allow an artificial agent to be regarded as an Artificial Conversational Companion. We describe relationships between the components and identify systematic shortcomings of the current systems. We propose a scalable method for implementing the desired capabilities of an Artificial Conversational Companion in a generic framework with reusable, customizable and interdependent components.

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