Introducing Culture in the Multi-party Virtual Dialogue System

Abstract

Over the past twenty years, we have learned to visually create truly lifelike virtual characters. We can bring them to life with current modelling, animation and rendering technologies, and even populate vast virtual worlds with them. On the other hand, advances in the fields of artificial intelligence and computational anthropology can also amaze one's imagination. However, the unification of these areas, namely the empowerment of virtual characters with real human features, such as personality, social roles, interpersonal relationships and culture, still awaits for many new discoveries. In particular, these discoveries are needed for the field of human-machine interaction. Thereby, in this thesis we propose an internal cultural model that serves as an extension to the existing multi-party virtual dialogue system. Our approach is based solely on Hofstede's concept of culture. To prove the effectiveness of our model, we conducted a cross-cultural user study, in which participants from Mexico, Russia and the Netherlands interacted with culturally strengthened virtual characters in two scenarios: doctor-patients and teacher-students conversations. Despite the fact that we got some positive results, we came to the conclusion that for a virtual incarnation of truly lifelike human behavior culture alone is not enough. To achieve excellence in such human-machine interaction systems, it is also necessary to take into account the personality, personal experience, and other social aspects.