The agent is "always on," i.e. it is continuously available and aware (using a camera and infrared motion sensor) when the user is in its presence and can initiate interaction with the user, rather than requiring the user login to begin interaction. We expect that the agent will help reduce the user's isolation not just by always being around but also by specific activities that connect the user with friends, family and the local community. Our goal is for the agent to be a natural, humanlike presence that "resides" in the user's apartment. Beginning in the late summer of 2014, we will be placing our agents with users for a monthlong evaluation study. Figure 1: Virtual agent interface -- "Karen" Three issues of our project directly concern the topics of this workshop are: (1) the embodiment of the agent, (2) the engagement behaviors that are associated with being "always measures we will be using are questionnaires that assess the on," and (3) AI tools for support intelligent behavior.

Current behavior authoring tools force game designers to split their attention between the game context and the tool context. We have addressed this problem by developing a behavior authoring tool that merges these two contexts. This paper outlines the design and implementation of a gameindependent behavior tree authoring tool, called AIPaint, that allows a designer to create and edit behavior trees via a natural sketching interface overlaid on the game world. We demonstrate the use of AIPaint to author computercontrolled characters in two simple games and report on an observational evaluation.

We have developed an automated counseling system in which clients interact with an embodied conversational People who could benefit from a positive change in health agent (Cassell 2000) that acts as a virtual counselor. To behavior form a large and variable population, with assist precontemplations and contemplators, we differences in individual characteristics and circumstances.