"We created a virtual interactive avatar of the TV character, so that we can interact with the avatar in the same way that we would interact with the TV character themselves," Dr. James Charles, Research Fellow at the University of Leeds told Sputnik. "We're using TV shows as a scientific experiment. Our main goal is to capture what it is that makes people who they are and learn how to replicate this," Dr. Charles added. To make Joey talk, the team at Leeds University used an algorithm to pick from a database of sound units, scientifically known as phonemes. They selected the correct phoneme in order to string a sentence together and make it sound smooth and natural with the correct intonation and using the right words.