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SmarterChild was a chatbot available on AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger (previously MSN Messenger) networks. [1] [2]
SmarterChild was an intelligent agent or "bot" developed by ActiveBuddy, Inc., [3] with offices in New York and Sunnyvale. [4] It was widely distributed across global instant messaging networks.[ citation needed ] SmarterChild became very popular, attracting over 30 million Instant Messenger "buddies" on AIM (AOL), MSN and Yahoo Messenger over the course of its lifetime. [5]
Founded in 2000, ActiveBuddy was the brainchild of Robert Hoffer and Timothy Kay, who later brought seasoned advertising executive Peter Levitan on board as CEO. The concept for conversational instant messaging bots came from the founder's vision to add natural language comprehension functionality to the increasingly popular AIM instant messaging application.[ citation needed ] The original implementation took shape as a demo that Kay programmed in Perl in his Los Altos garage to connect a single buddy name, "ActiveBuddy", to look up stock symbols, and later allow AIM users to play Colossal Cave Adventure, a word-based adventure game, and MIT's Boris Katz Start Question Answering System [6] but quickly grew to include a wide range of database applications the company called 'knowledge domains' including instant access to news, weather, stock information, movie times, yellow pages listings, and detailed sports data, as well as a variety of tools (personal assistant, calculators, translator, etc.).[ citation needed ] None of the individual domains which the company had named “stocksBuddy”, “sportsBuddy”, etc. ever launched publicly. When Stephen Klein came on board as COO — and eventually CEO — he insisted that all of the disparate test “buddies” be launched together with the company’s highly-developed colloquial chat domain. He suggested using “SmarterChild”, a username coined by Tim Kay which Tim was using to test various things. The bundled domains were launched publicly as SmarterChild (on AIM initially) in June 2001.[ citation needed ] SmarterChild provided information wrapped in fun and quirky conversation. The company generated no revenue from SmarterChild, but used it as a demonstration of the power of what Klein called “conversational computing”. The company subsequently marketed Automated Service Agents—delivering immediate answers to customer service inquiries—-to large corporations, like Comcast, Cingular, TimeWarner Cable, etc. [7]
SmarterChild's popularity spawned targeted marketing-oriented bots for Radiohead, Austin Powers, Intel, Keebler, The Sporting News and others.[ citation needed ] ActiveBuddy co-founders, Kay and Hoffer, as co-inventors, were issued two controversial U.S. patents in 2002. [8] [9]
ActiveBuddy changed its name to Colloquis (briefly Conversagent) and targeted development of consumer-facing enterprise customer service agents, which the company marketed as Automated Service Agents(tm). Microsoft acquired Colloquis in October 2006 [10] and proceeded to de-commission SmarterChild and kill off the Automated Service Agent business as well.
In many ways,[ further explanation needed ] SmarterChild was a precursor to Apple's Siri and Samsung's S Voice. As Shawn Carolan of Menlo Ventures, a Siri investor, said, "…When I first encountered Siri, SmarterChild already had ten million users and was getting a billion messages a day… The market was speaking." [11]
Robert Hoffer, ActiveBuddy co-founder, licensed the technology from Microsoft after Microsoft abandoned the Colloquis technology.
AIM was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time.
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate (real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involving simple text message exchanges, modern IM applications and services tend to also feature the exchange of multimedia, emojis, file transfer, VoIP, and video chat capabilities.
A chatbot is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of maintaining a conversation with a user in natural language and simulating the way a human would behave as a conversational partner. Such chatbots often use deep learning and natural language processing, but simpler chatbots have existed for decades.
An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) on the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet bot plays the client role in a client–server model whereas the server role is usually played by web servers. Internet bots are able to perform simple and repetitive tasks much faster than a person could ever do. The most extensive use of bots is for web crawling, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers. More than half of all web traffic is generated by bots.
In artificial intelligence, an embodied agent, also sometimes referred to as an interface agent, is an intelligent agent that interacts with the environment through a physical body within that environment. Agents that are represented graphically with a body, for example a human or a cartoon animal, are also called embodied agents, although they have only virtual, not physical, embodiment. A branch of artificial intelligence focuses on empowering such agents to interact autonomously with human beings and the environment. Mobile robots are one example of physically embodied agents; Ananova and Microsoft Agent are examples of graphically embodied agents. Embodied conversational agents are embodied agents that are capable of engaging in conversation with one another and with humans employing the same verbal and nonverbal means that humans do.
A dialogue system, or conversational agent (CA), is a computer system intended to converse with a human. Dialogue systems employed one or more of text, speech, graphics, haptics, gestures, and other modes for communication on both the input and output channel.
Robert Hoffer is an American businessman who for the past 25 years has primarily worked in technology and software. He initially developed and launched one of the first online yellow pages. Hoffer is also credited with developing instant messaging agents and web-based scratch-off games. Over the course of his career, he has worked for and consulted for many large corporations, including Apple Computer, AOL, Xerox, PepsiCo, Playboy, Citibank, and Lipton.
Colloquis, previously known as ActiveBuddy and Conversagent, was a company that created conversation-based interactive agents originally distributed via instant messaging platforms. The company had offices in New York, New York, and Sunnyvale, California.
Windows Live Agents are chatterbot agents for Windows Live Messenger that is part of Microsoft's Windows Live services. They provide users the ability to interact with the agents through Windows Live Messenger to get more information about specific topics.
A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to simulate human conversation, such as via online chat, to facilitate interaction with their users. The interaction may be via text, graphical interface, or voice - as some virtual assistants are able to interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices.
GooglyMinotaur was an instant messaging bot on the AOL Instant Messenger network. Developed by ActiveBuddy under contract by Capitol Records, GooglyMinotaur provided Radiohead-related information, and was released simultaneously with the band's fifth studio album, Amnesiac in June 2001. GooglyMinotaur was named for the character that appears on the Amnesiac album cover.
Gupshup is an American messaging platform for businesses to communicate. With primary operations in India, United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Middle East and South East Asia. It is owned and operated by Webaroo Inc.
Haptik is an Indian enterprise conversational AI platform founded in August 2013, and acquired by Reliance Industries Limited in 2019. The company develops technology to enable enterprises to build conversational AI systems that allow users to converse with applications and electronic devices in free-format, natural language, using speech or text. The company has been accorded numerous accolades including the Frost & Sullivan Award, NASSCOM's Al Game Changer Award, and serves Fortune 500 brands globally in industries such as financial, insurance, healthcare, technology and communications.
A conversational user interface (CUI) is a user interface for computers that emulates a conversation with a real human. Historically, computers have relied on text-based user interfaces and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to translate the user's desired action into commands the computer understands. While an effective mechanism of completing computing actions, there is a learning curve for the user associated with GUI. Instead, CUIs provide opportunity for the user to communicate with the computer in their natural language rather than in a syntax specific commands.
Yalochat is an artificial intelligence platform specializing in emerging markets. It is based in San Francisco with offices in Mexico City, Mumbai, Shanghai, Bogotá, and São Paulo.
Conversational commerce is e-commerce done via various means of conversation and using technology such as: speech recognition, speaker recognition, natural language processing and artificial intelligence.
Conversable is a SaaS based Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered conversational platform, headquartered in Austin, Texas. It allows customers to create intelligent, automated response flows through conversations in any messaging channel or voice platforms. It has offices in Austin and Dallas.
Yellow.ai, formerly Yellow Messenger, is a multinational company headquartered in San Mateo, California focused on customer service automation. It was founded in 2016 and provides an AI platform for automating customer support experiences across chat and voice. The platform supports more than 135 languages across more than 35 channels.
Artificial intelligence in customer experience is the use and development of artificial intelligence (AI) to aid and improve customer experience.