Ever wished you could talk to someone from the past, or ask your computer for specific information and get a friendly response?
Animated avatars - or virtual representations of humans - will be able to grant these wishes sooner than you may think, according to scientists at the BA Festival of Science in Norwich.
Rollo Carpenter, artificial intelligence programmer and managing director of Icogno Ltd and Tim Child of Televirtual Ltd will introduce George, a "most human" avatar, to the audience later this week.
George is an advanced language-learning "chatbot", or conversational artificial intelligence. Unlike the majority of chatbots, which are limited by pre-programmed rules and therefore finite, the software behind George relies entirely on feedback. This enables him to learn and grow from his experiences of interacting with real people.
George can speak 40 languages and is able to understand and respond to spoken and written messages. But what makes him truly unique is his ability to imitate human emotion.
"George is an avatar with attitude," Child will tell the audience. "He delivers his lines with emotional expression. You can even make him angry."
George, like other avatars, has certain advantages over the average human. "He can be an expert in anything, be it ladies' fashion, law or road safety," Child will explain.
And unlike humans, George can participate in as many as 1,000 unique conversations with different people at once. In time, avatars may supersede more traditional telephone or web-based helplines, providing an important community service.
The educational benefits of specialist avatars are also enormous.
For example, Child will suggest that it should be possible to programme an avatar's artificial intelligence with all available information on William Shakespeare.
The avatar would know all of he bard's plays and poetry, the language he spoke, the history of his life and times, and all of his reported likes and dislikes.
"With this information in place, students would be able to have a discussion with a virtual reality of Shakespeare," Child will suggest. This virtual Shakespeare would have a personality and could discuss his thoughts and feelings about his work.
Child will assure the audience that "intelligent avatars are not part of some Big Brother plot to replace humans".
Instead, avatars represent the cutting edge of interactive media, the applications of which are limited only by our imagination.