London: The unlikely star of one of Europe's leading science festivals takes to the world stage on Thursday but the 39-year-old polymath linguist singleton called George is that ultimate curiosity - an avatar or an AIvtar (Artificial Intelligence avatar), in other words, a virtual human.

George, who is a chat robot or chatbot, is believed to be the forerunner of a whole new race soon to populate our planet. His descendants, say scientists and starry-eyed anoraks, may soon become familiar faces around the world in interactive entertainment systems, advertising, selling insurance or used cars or even answering the phones in call centres.

Times of India: article

A sunny afternoon in a computer-strewn office in Norwich and I am struggling to bond with a middle-aged bald man wearing a white polo neck and a smug grin who appears on the computer screen in front of me.

"You're being mean to me," he says, brow puckered, eyes flashing and deep voice resonating with mid-Atlantic twang.

"Oh dear," I answer. "I don't mean to, but I'm not really following you."

"Now you're being really mean," he reiterates, slamming a strange, pink and very girlish hand down on the table in front of him.

Daily Mail article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=404000&in_page_id=1770

George is an online robot that has sufficient artificial intelligence to chat with real people, in a variety of languages.

Rory Cellan-Jones visited UK firm InterMediaLab to meet their prize-winning virtual employee.

The RealPlayer Stream: George on the news

The next generation of children could be able to talk with their teddy bears, according to experts who say that 'chatbox' technology is progressing so fast that toys will be able to hold realistic human conversations within twenty years.

Full Metro story: http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=19290&in_page_id=2

The Festival of Science will be attended by its first virtual delegate, a software "chatbot" that can hold 1,000 conversations at the same time.

George is a thin, bald androgynous 40-year-old who can blink, fidget and converse with a peculiar, languid accent. The virtual human was developed by Rollo Carpenter, artificial intelligence (AI) programmer and managing director of Icogno Ltd, and Tim Child, founder of Televirtual Ltd.

The Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/04/nscience04.xml