Move over, Dan Rather
Ananova, a virtual newscaster created by the British Press Association,
debuted on the Web last month and ranked among the most popular news sites
with 1.6 million visitors. To make Ananova appear human, her creators used
advanced speech recognition technology and other tools that give the
newscaster not only a face, but also a personality. The stories Ananova reads
are coded so she will use an appropriate tone and facial expressions. Other
organizations are also creating digital characters, or avatars, believing the
technology will succeed because Web surfers prefer to feel as though they are
interacting with a human rather than a machine. Motorola next month will
launch a "cyber-assistant" named Mya, who will read e-mail messages, stock
quotes, and other online information using wireless or traditional phone
connections. Meanwhile, MIT's MediaLab is working on a real-estate agent
avatar who will read information from a housing database in real time. The
University of Southern California's Integrated Systems Center is developing
"immersive environments," in which users create avatars of themselves that
interact with other users' avatars. Using immersive environments, people
could send lifelike representations of themselves into chat rooms or online
shopping sites, says the center's director Max Nikias.
(Washington Post, May 31, 2000) 
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