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In our multicultural world, affect-aware AI systems that support humans need the ability to perceive affect across variations in emotion expression patterns across cultures. These systems must perform well in cultural contexts without…
In this chapter, we provide a review of conversational agents (CAs), discussing chatbots, intended for casual conversation with a user, as well as task-oriented agents that generally engage in discussions intended to reach one or several…
Automated Speech Recognition shows superhuman performance for adult English speech on a range of benchmarks, but disappoints when fed children's speech. This has long sat in the way of child-robot interaction. Recent evolutions in…
This study explores how age and language shape the deliberate vocal expression of emotion, addressing underexplored user groups, Teenagers (N = 12) and Adults 55+ (N = 12), within speech emotion recognition (SER). While most SER systems are…
We examine prosodic entrainment in cooperative game dialogs for new feature sets describing register, pitch accent shape, and rhythmic aspects of utterances. For these as well as for established features we present entrainment profiles to…
Learning to understand speech appears almost effortless for typically developing infants, yet from an information-processing perspective, acquiring a language from acoustic speech is an enormous challenge. This chapter reviews recent…
Synthesizing expressive Japanese character speech poses unique challenges due to pitch-accent sensitivity and stylistic variability. This paper empirically evaluates two open-source text-to-speech models--VITS and Style-BERT-VITS2 JP Extra…
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) offers promising potential for advancing human-AI collaboration in qualitative research. However, existing works focused on conventional machine-learning and pattern-based AI systems, and little is…
We present a dialogue elicitation study to assess how users envision conversations with a perfect voice assistant (VA). In an online survey, N=205 participants were prompted with everyday scenarios, and wrote the lines of both user and VA…
Recently, instruction-following audio-language models have received broad attention for audio interaction with humans. However, the absence of pre-trained audio models capable of handling diverse audio types and tasks has hindered progress…
Designing conversational user interface experience is complicated because conversation comes with many expectations. When these expectations are met, we feel the interface is natural, but once violated, we feel something is amiss. The last…
The growing capabilities of large language models and multimodal systems have spurred interest in voice-first AI assistants, yet existing benchmarks are inadequate for evaluating the full range of these systems' capabilities. We introduce…
Young people are among the fastest adopters of generative AI, yet research emphasises adult-designed tools and experiments rather than playful, self-directed youth use. We analysed discourse from 4,172 users in Character.AI's official…
The application of psychophysiologicy in human-computer interaction is a growing field with significant potential for future smart personalised systems. Working in this emerging field requires comprehension of an array of physiological…
Conversational agents (CAs) are increasingly embedded in daily life, yet their ability to navigate user emotions efficiently is still evolving. This study investigates how users with varying traits -- gender, personality, and cultural…
Little research has investigated the design of conversational styles of voice assistants (VA) for adults in their later adulthood with varying personalities. In this Wizard of Oz experiment, 34 middle-aged (50 to 64 years old) and 24 older…
We present an innovative methodology for studying and teaching the impacts of AI through a role play game. The game serves two primary purposes: 1) training AI developers and AI policy professionals to reflect on and prepare for future…
From movie characters to modern science fiction - bringing characters into interactive, story-driven conversations has captured imaginations across generations. Achieving this vision is highly challenging and requires much more than just…
Interactions involving children span a wide range of important domains from learning to clinical diagnostic and therapeutic contexts. Automated analyses of such interactions are motivated by the need to seek accurate insights and offer…
We address speaker comparison by listening in a game-like environment, hypothesized to make the task more motivating for naive listeners. We present the same 30 trials selected with the help of an x-vector speaker recognition system from…