Back in the 80’s ‘Max Headroom’ was (supposedly) an animated computer talk show host. The show was successful in the UK. Its origins were in the USA, where the TV/Movie was actually based on a reporter being replaced by a computer generated version of himself. This was set in a TV dominated future world. So much for TV’s dominance, thank you YouTube!

Today we are interacting with computer generated customer service systems and animations. For example AT&T have Ask ‘Allie’, I wouldn’t even click on it again. IKEA have ‘Anna’. I’ve taken the piss out of Anna a lot, due to an IKEA created frustration but there doesn’t seem to be any real AI behind her.

Now we have a truly animated, somewhat AI bot called ‘George’ over at Jabberwacky. The animation is shite but George is based on millions of chat room interactions and mathematical things like algorithms etc. George is learning from human chat interaction all the time. He gives appropriate and somewhat weird answers but can hold a conversation. Hopefully George or his programmer will work out some of our human quirkiness he has inherited over time. (Bif you’re his stunt double! lol) Our near future it seems, will have more intelligent AI’s giving us tech support online, which is good for 24/7 communication. But what do we do with our human frustrations?