Microsoft's Laura will rule your Outlook calendar, nightmares

Back in Office 97, Microsoft wowed us with Clippy, the talking paperclip that made Word tasks far more annoying than necessary. By Office 2007 he was finally out of a job, but his spirit lives on in Laura, an oddly creepy virtual digital assistant shown off as part of Microsoft's vision for the future (video of an earlier demo is below). She's said to be able to schedule reservations, make appointments, and maybe even get you tickets for the first Watchmen showing tonight -- much the same as the company's EVA assistant, but not in a car and not as hot. She can judge you based on what type of clothing you're wearing and even tell if you're engaged in a conversation, perhaps keeping the doors on an elevator open while you chat with someone getting off, thus further annoying every other person on board. Can she write really stellar blog posts, though? We think not.

[crescentdavid Posted Mar 5th 2009 2:35PM]

The artificial speech is just flat out horrible. Why on earth would they even show this? It's so speculative, so far away from any sort of acceptable presentation ... it's laughable. Talking to a house or office monitor and using command phrases is more personal than this digital train wreck.

//end rant

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 5th 2009 3:02PM]

Once again, Star Trek technology makes its way to reality.

Soon, we too will have automatic sliding doors with "dramatic pause" intelligence.

[csb1227 Posted Mar 6th 2009 1:59AM]

Hey, Craig. I like talking to people. I hope I never meet your computer lady.

[Eternal Density Posted Mar 5th 2009 5:07PM]

I vote Ellen McLain for voicing this.

"Ongoing sector sweep, biotics confirmed. Continue surface sector sweep, remote compliance, exterminate. Seek passive signiture imprint. Mandate sublevel restrictions.

And then there will be cake."

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 6th 2009 7:15AM]

This is obviously the future. At this moment the automation of call center agent is VERY HOT. As founder of www.chatbots.org I regularly speak to developers of such system world wide. In this economic downturn, the interest in chatbots are really booming.

Smart chatbots are able to route questions from a chatbot to a real life agent when a question can not be answered. Research in Australia has even shown that people prefer to talk to robots than to offshore call center.

A speech and facial recognition is just a next, very logical, natural steps. It will take some time, but in the far future we will have conversation with artifical characters who look like human beings and are more intelligent (no typo, more intelligent) than human beings.

[inmyhead Posted Mar 6th 2009 11:35AM]

She reminds me of that bitch from Portal that tried to burn me alive...

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 8th 2009 7:47PM]

Did anyone notice that his first name is misspelled?