How Many Utterances Are Needed to Support Time-Offset Interaction?

Time-offset interaction is a new technology that enables conversational interaction with a person who is not present, using pre-recorded video statements. Statements were recorded by Pinchas Gutter, a Holocaust survivor, talking about his personal experiences before, during and after the Holocaust. Participants interacted with the statements through a “Wizard of Oz” system, where live operators select an appropriate reaction to each utterance in real time; unanswered questions were analyzed to identify gaps, and additional statements were recorded to fill the gaps. Even though participant questions were completely unconstrained, the recorded statements from the first round directly addressed at least 58% of the questions; this number rises to 95% with the second round of recording, when tested on newly elicited utterances. This demonstrates the feasibility for a system to address unseen questions and sustain short conversations when the topic is well defined. The statements have been put into an automated system using existing language understanding technology, to create a preliminary working system of time-offset interaction, allowing a live conversation with a real human who is not present for the conversation in real time.