KRISTINA: a knowledge-based virtual conversation agent

Abstract

We present an intelligent embodied conversation agent with linguistic, social and emotional competence. Unlike the vast majority of the state-of-the-art conversation agents, the proposed agent is constructed around an ontology-based knowledge model that allows for exible reasoning-driven dialogue planning, instead of using prede ned dialogue scripts. It is further complemented by multimodal communication analysis and generation modules and a search engine for the retrieval of multimedia background content from the web needed for conducting a conversation on a given topic. The evaluation of the 1st prototype of the agent shows a high degree of acceptance of the agent by the users with respect to its trustworthiness, naturalness, etc. The individual technologies are being further improved in the 2nd prototype.