In 1994, Dr. Michael ("Fuzzy") Mauldin, Founder of Lycos, Inc., developed a prototype "Chatterbot", Julia®, which competed in the internationally known Turing test, for the coveted Loebner Prize. The Turing Test matches computer scientist judges against machines to see if they can distinguish a computer from a real human. This prototype version was refined and developed, and in 1997, Dr. Mauldin and Peter Plantec, a clinical psychologist, formed Virtual Personalities, Inc. (now Conversive, Inc.) in order to create a virtual human interface that would incorporate real-time animation as well as speech and natural language processing. The initial release, a stand-alone virtual person called Sylvie,® was beta-tested to the public. This release was well received, and finally, after several versions, the production release of our Verbally Enhanced Software Robot - or, Verbot® was deployed in the Fall 2000. Since then, Verbots® and their friends, Conversive Agents™, have been deployed in a number of different environments. The future of Verbot® Technology (formerly Vperson®) looks promising, and we promise they'll just keep getting better.

Visit us at Conversive, Inc. for more information.