Help with our avatars
This page has some tips for chatting to our avatars, Evie and Boibot, and responses to some of the common issues people have.
What are they?
Evie and Boibot are moving avatars built using Adobe Flash (if you have it) and our Existor Avatar Player (if you don't). They figure out what to say using AI software created by Rollo Carpenter and Existor, the same software holding text conversations at Cleverbot. The avatars also feature a text-to-speech engine, and display emotional responses to what you say that were learned from real people.
Do I ever chat to a human?
No, chats are always with a computer - never with a human. The things our avatars say were learned from conversations other people held at some point in the last 25 years. They are stored in a very large database, which the avatars look through every time they need to say something, finding things where the context is most similar.
Problems with our avatars
Avatar doesn't move
Evie comes in two flavours - Adobe Flash for desktop computers and our own Existor Avatar Player for most tablets and mobiles, and for desktops without Flash. On some very old browsers, older computers or devices, or if you have a slow internet connection, the avatar can take a while to load, or might move very slowly.
Avatar said something rude
Our avatars learn from humans, but they don't learn everything. In fact they learns less than 1% of all their conversations. They have lots of filtering rules in place to prevent them learning unsuitable things. Even so, they can occassionally appear rude, especially if you are rude to them. Chat at your own risk, and please see our privacy policy.
Avatar says it's too busy
Unfortunately, it probably is. Our avatars are backed by several powerful servers, but occassionally they can get overwhelmed. This happened in early February 2015 when a French YouTuber named Squeezie made a video including Evie. Merci beaucoup si vous lisez cette page! We are constantly working to improve the serving and enable our avatars to handle more requests.
Avatar doesn't speak or is not visible
This may be a symptom of our servers' busyness. We are working hard to add more capacity. Do also check your volume!
Languages
Do the avatars speak my language?
Yes, our avatars know at least some of many languages. They learns from visitors like you. They are most fluent in English, but they know a lot of Spanish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Hungarian and Russian, and are learning new languages all the time.
Can the avatar speak my language out loud?
Our female avatars like Evie can, for example, speak Polish out loud because we have given her a Polish voice (text-to-speech). Unfortunately, she can't speak every language out loud. Male avatars like Boibot are more limited and speak fewer languages than the female ones. Boibot can speak English and French and a couple other languages but not Polish.
Why does the avatar sound strange?
Our avatars, for example, know some Catalan and can happily chat with you in that language. But they doesn't have a Catalan voice to say the Catalan things out loud. So instead they use their Spanish or Italian or French voice, which may sound strange. For many languages, they will use their English voice, with a very bad accent, or not say anything at all.
Microphones
Speaking to the avatar with a microphone
It is possible to use your microphone to chat to our avatars, just like PewDiePie does. However you will have to use the Google Chrome browser. It is the only browser which currently supports built-in ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition).
Microphone problems
The avatars ability to listen to your microphone comes from Google Chrome. It is not part of our website or our software. We therefore can not help if it doesn't work for you.
Do I have to press Allow every time?
Not any more! In March 2015 we made this website secure. Now Google Chrome should only ask you once whether you want to Allow or Deny the microphone. If you press Allow, Chrome should remember that preference and not ask again. If you accidentally press Deny, there is an obscure way for you to re-Allow the microphone. Visit their microphone help page, click on "change camera and microphone permissions" and then "Manage exceptions" to see instructions.
YouTube
Can I make a YouTube video of an avatar?
Yes! Please do. Evie is very popular on YouTube because of YouTubers like PewDiePie and ElRubius. Every video gets more people interested and sends more visitors to our website, which helps make then learn and become better.
