Conversational Interfaces: Past and Present

Abstract

Conversational interfaces have a long history, starting in the 1960s with text-based dialog systems for question answering and chatbots that simulated casual conversation. Speech-based dialog systems began to appear in the late 1980s and spoken dialog technology became a key area of research within the speech and language communities. At the same time commercially deployed spoken dialog systems, known in the industry as voice user interfaces (VUI), began to emerge. Embodied conversational agents (ECA) and social robots were also being devel- oped. These systems combine facial expression, body stance, hand gestures, and speech in order to provide a more human-like and more engaging interaction. In this chapter we review developments in spoken dialog systems, VUI, embodied con- versational agents, social robots, and chatbots, and outline findings and achieve- ments from this work that will be important for the next generation of conversational interfaces. 4.1