Virtual 'Friends': Video Chatbot May Bring Joey Tribbiani To Your Phone

If talking to Siri, Cortana and Alexa aren't cutting it for you, know that researchers are looking for a way to spice things up with characters from popular TV shows. A team of researchers at the University of Leeds--James Charles, Derek Magee and David Hogg--have turned to algorithms and machine learning tools for digitizing avatars of well known characters. The algorithms will have the ability to identify specific characters and catch individual facial expressions, speech patterns, body language and voice. Then, a machine learning tool will analyze scripts to learn how the character pieces words together. The final result will be a "virtually immortalized" version of the character that can create new sentences in the style and appearance of the character.