4:10 PM - 4:40 PM
[20p-E308-6] Development of a virtual agent with a function of emotional expression imitation and its effects on subjective feelings and brain activity
Keywords:emotional expression, imitation, brain activity measurement
Much attention is being focused on artificial intelligence (AI) as a means to realize new services and functions that will make life more convenient and prosperous for humans. In the same way, the interface with humans is important to increase the diffusion of AI in society. In communication with interfaces, it is important that the user believes that the interface has the same emotions as humans and is showing empathy. Aiming to realize AI that comes close to humans, we have developed a technology that imitates emotional expressions of people. This technology reads emotions and make a virtual agent to express same emotions through a CG character. To demonstrate the advantage of this technology, we measured subjective ratings and brain activity during being imitated of emotional expressions. The result shows that users’ positive feeling was induced and users thought the AI could express the same emotions as humans (effects of AI anthropomorphism) on the responses of the virtual agent.