About virtual agents: review of Skaaz
Posted by: Fidji SIMO in Blogging, Innovation, Internet/Technology, eBay
I just came back from the Skaaz party at Milk, where we were presented the latest and public version of Skaaz. Again sorry for my English readers, it is a French company but you should definitely read this if you are interested in Artificial Intelligence.
A few weeks ago in my article about Voki I said that the future of avatars was Artificial Intelligence so that they can really take your place online; no need to explain that the slogan of Skaaz is “Always ON”! It is based on the Virtuoz technology, company I have already talked about as it is the provider of the virtual agent Louise in the Customer section of eBay, which was focused on virtual agents for companies. Skaaz is their mass market product. Your Skaaz can be embbeded in your blog or MSN, and you will have to educate him by asking lots of questions so that he will be able to answer them for you when you are offline.
From the demo I have seen, it seems that it takes a lot of time to educate your avatar, but I don’t think it will be a huge barrier for teenagers (main target) as fun will prevail. Besides, Skaazs are too cute! You can discuss with mine (sorry but she is not well educate in the right sense of the word, but I will work on it and embed her to this blog when the result will be acceptable) here.
Future evolutions will include:
- Possibility of modifying your avatar after creation (not possible now, which is definitely not convenient as I had personalized my avatar really quickly during the demo, without thinking I had to stick to it!)
- Synchronization with Twitter for your avatar to answer with the most updated answer the question “what are you doing?”
- Addition of voice to your avatar
- Launch of the same service in English (would be great!) probably at the end of the year
Just as an overview, Skaaz has required 1 year and a half of development, 4 people full time, and has launched it beta version 1 year ago. This version is considered as the v3.
This is the video (in French) I have made during the presentation by the founder Pascal Levy Garboua:
Update: Apparently the same kind of service has been launched in the US, it is called MyCyberTwin. A really good article about this service can be read here. Thanks to Michel Leblanc for the info on his blog.
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Thanks for the podcast!
A US version will be opened in beta in September hopefully….
Pascal
Thanks for the invite Pascal! The party was great, and I will probably spend the week end teaching my life to my Skaaz, will be fun…
Good luck for the US version, I will be glad to try it in September!
By the way Pascal, if you read this, can you tell us if it will be possible to make two avatars discuss with each others? So that two people can date without even knowing it!
“Moi: Do you speak english?
Fidjissimo :
Bon je ne suis pas sûr de bien comprendre, à mon tour de poser une question : tu veux te marier avec moi?
Moi :
oui, qu’en penses rémy?
Fidjissimo :
Et bien moi je dirais : Désolée, je suis déjà prise!”
Nevertheless, it seems your Skaaz is lucid
OK, I am really laughing! You can’t imagine the weird discussions my little Skaaz has had, but yours is probably the weirdest! I apparently have a lot left to teach her…
And for info the English version will be launched in September, as you have probably seen in the comments.
By the way, Remy is definitely not OK for you to marry me!
[...] En attendant, je vous laisse en compagnie de mon Skaaz (robot dressé à faire les conversations à ma place), découvert via le blog de Fidjissimo et une invitation de Lionel… [...]
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title About virtual agents: review of Skaaz. Thanks for informative article
Thanks Eric, I’m glad you liked it!