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Hire Virtual Characters to Sell, Impress and Engage Online

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Virtual assistants, avatars, and virtual characters can be hired with a click and may help the entrepreneur to achieve business success.   Using virtual characters is still a new way of thinking that requires a large paradigm shift.  For a quick review of virtual characters, we will reference an expert on the topic.

We're living in an era where we automate conversations, as opposed to the monologue we automated during the last century. Brand agents (artificial characters) having personal and emotional automated conversations with consumers will represent every brand in the near future.

Here are Virtual Character options to represent you online:

Virtual human:  A 3D animated human being with conversation skills. Although generic, the drawback of ‘virtual human’ is that it still cannot be used for all AI characters. A zoo for example, might want to employ an intelligent virtual ape to act as a host on the website or on site to inform and engage visitors. Furthermore, virtual human is also often used for 3D models of the body: organs, bones and nerves, instead of the social skills of the human being. chatbots.org/virtual_human

Virtual agent:  Although widely used by businesses for automated chat services in their customer service pages, ‘virtual agent’ is also used by academics for embodied agents (chatbots.org/embodied_agent) explicitly lacking conversational skills. Neither community respects the meaning of the other, so a compromise between businesses and researchers is not very likely. chatbots.org/virtual_agent

Avatars:  Although traditionally used for the visual part of animated 3D characters, ‘avatars’ is now also being used to address their behavior, intelligence and language skills. It is being used by corporate buyers of virtual assistants for call centers especially, even more so in the US market. Being a homonym, i.e. a term with multiple meanings, the movie ‘Avatar’, as well as the deep religious meaning of the term makes the usage controversial. chatbots.org/avatar

Conversational agent:  Despite being used often in the academic field and being well defined within the community, conversational agent is rarely used by businesses and amateurs. This term deserves more attention by businesses. chatbots.org/conversational_agent

Chatbot:   The oldest term, a contraction of chat and robot; an automated chat system. The term chatbot is slightly more informal than conversational agent and is therefore widely adopted by many AI developers, businesses and academics around the world. Due to its informal implications, however,chatbot it is also explicitly avoided by a few companies for serious web self-service applications. chatbots.org/chatbot

Virtual assistant:  Although used for deployment of virtual humans in customer service web pages or companies, virtual assistant is used far more often to describe someone assisting another person over a distance, such as a personal assistant working from home. Nevertheless, the popularity of using virtual assistant as a chat bot (</a> ) synonym is growing. chatbots.org/virtual_assistant

Brand Agent:  A brand agent is defined as an artificial representative acting on behalf a company, product brand, or governmental organization. It is well defined and no other, significant meanings exist, so its popularity is growing. hatbots.org/brand_agent

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