More annoying than a popup, and with the conversational skill of your pet goldfish, the AI chat bots starting to appear on more and more online stores are a case of tech being adopted before its time. On the rare occasion you may interact with the system, it’s generally only a matter of time before your queries are redirected to a human in customer support.
For such services to truly be of use – whether they be developed for a single site or across the entire internet – the bots must be developed not just as tools, but as fleshed-out individuals with a sense of their role. In essence, they must become characters; so believable, so knowable, that a user’s default thought is to reach out to the AI to have their needs met.
That’s why creative writers from such diverse mediums as poetry, theatre, the novel and the screen are collaborating with tech companies to give their algorithms a true personality. At Microsoft, for instance, 23 writers make up the editorial team for Cortana, the digital assistant available on phones, Windows 10, and Xbox One. With a name referencing an AI support character from one of the company’s most popular game series, Halo, the system has high expectations to live up to.
Talking to Quartz, editorial manager Jonathan Foster talks about developing a relatable identity for Cortana without trying to hide the fact that she is an AI program. Yes, she can talk about such topics as movies (she’s a big sci-fi fan, with Star Trek being her favourite film), but try to debate her on issues such as religion and politics, and her response will be a list of resources aimed at helping the user make an informed decision.
To some, the idea of writing may seem ‘below’ the worth of a poet or a playwright, but according to Nathan Phillips of creative agency It’s That, such thinking only limits potential. “There’s no such thing as a VR idea or a book idea,” he states. “There’s an idea that requires you use VR to convey it, or idea that requires you have a book to convey it. Think about how many incredible stories have been lost because someone was like ‘I write books.’ When you stop focusing on how it works and start focusing on what it is, you can push into a realm of idea-focused innovation.”
Like in VR, the emphasis is not on watching the protagonist, but becoming them. It’s about creating an emotional bond, and a positive experience via technology that compliments, not overrides, human relationships.
Original story: Quartz.