Apps take a step closer towards real AI

How can a small group of app developers design software that fulfils the needs of millions of different people? This has vexed the technology world for years, and a Spanish company thinks it has cracked it with an online platform called Fiona.

The concept is all about creating the perfect personal assistant app, but if you're now thinking of Siri, you're way off. This is truly next generation stuff, with virtual avatars and holographic projections on the horizon that use a higher form of artificial intelligence (AI).

It's nothing short of a community for the creation of an artificial mind. Fiona (framework for interactive-services over natural-conversational agents) is the baby of Adele Robots, a Spanish company with offices in Delaware in the United States. The University of California, Clemson University, Athens University and Keio University are also involved, as are companies such as Nuance Communications, Chatbots, Verbio Speech Technologies and Ivona.

An avatar, however, has a human-like presence. "An avatar, also called a virtual assistant or embodied conversational agent, is a cartoonish yet realistic representation of a person who you can talk to, and answers you like a human," says Lucia Fernandez Cossio, director of projects at Adele Robots. "Avatars have a multitude of different uses, from advising you on the purchase of a car to emulating a television news reporter."

That does sound a bit like Siri, although we're not sure we'd trust her to choose our next apartment.

"Siri is a personal assistant, but it is not embodied; Fiona avatars are," Cossio says. "The main difference is that the avatars created using Fiona combine the knowledge of hundreds of universities, research centres and companies all over the world."