Three primary technological challenges must be overcome before we can build entertainment software that appeals to the general consumer. This is a technology analogous to artificial intelligence, but its emphasis is quite different. Where AI has a mathematical feel to it, a tendency to tackle rigorously definable problems, I expect artificial personality to be more artistic in style. Unlike AI, there is no expectation that artificial personality will be right or wrong, merely more or less true to character. The second enabling technology is the modelling of the human face.
Facial expressions are one of the most important media of human emotional communication.
Their importance has been overlooked by the community at large. Yet facial expression is heavily used in other entertainment media. For example, consider Star Wars, widely acknowledged to be one of big hit movies of all time. Consider one of the most action-packed scenes in the movie, the final dogfight sequence culminating in the destruction of the Death Star. A careful analysis of that sequence shows that there is almost as much screen time devoted to facial shots as there is to action shots.