(2018-10-18) Juji Is An Empathetic Ai Chatbot That Holds Personalized Conversations With People

Juji is an empathetic AI chatbot that holds personalized conversations with people. We see great potential of using such an empathetic AI chatbot as a human companion,” Michelle Zhou said in an interview with VentureBeat.

Her team created Juji, a default AI persona with a cheerful and assertive personality. And she also created AI Minion, a chatbot targeted at gamers, which has a humble and cheerful personality. Both chatbots are useful in querying people about what they like and what they believe.

Michael Cai, a game and tech researcher at Interpret, used Zhou’s technology to run a field test for market research. He wanted to get responses from gamers about what they play, what they spend money on, and why. Cai said in an interview with VentureBeat that he can still elicit the best responses in his own moderated interviews or focus groups. But he can’t scale that to hundreds or thousands of people.

The respondents also left very entertaining comments to express their love for the AI. “The whole time I was doing this survey it felt like I was talking to a friend and sharing the same common ground. I loved that. I wish it didn’t have to end,” said one gamer.