Part of
Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key social, psychological, ethical and design issuesEdited by Yorick Wilks
[Natural Language Processing 8] 2010
► pp. 101–106
A good friend is the one that make you laugh, shares your deepest emotions and is there to listen and help you when you need it. Can we have we have a synthetic Companion with these qualities? He/she (we assume it has the status of a person at this stage) should be able understand and express emotions, to talk and listen, know who you are and what you feel and like. The Companion considered in this chapter is a synthetic creature living in a virtual world, able to display believable human-like qualities. The concept of believability within virtual environments is also discussed here together with some of the problems connected with the creation of such Companion.