Virtual software agent technology
Microsoft Agent
is a technology developed by
Microsoft
which employs animated characters,
text-to-speech engines
, and
speech recognition
software to enhance interaction with computer users. It came pre-installed as part of
Windows 2000
and later versions of
Microsoft Windows
up to
Windows Vista
. It was not included with
Windows 7
, and was completely discontinued in
Windows 8
. Microsoft Agent functionality was exposed as an
ActiveX control
that can be used by web pages.
The theory behind the software came from work on social interfaces by
Clifford Nass
and Byron Reeves at
Stanford
's Center for the Study of Language and Information.
[1]
Version history
[
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]
Interactive character technology was first introduced in
Microsoft Bob
, which used an early version of Microsoft Agent technology internally referred to as "Microsoft Actor". It was the code used in the initial version of the
Office Assistant
in
Microsoft Office 97
. Microsoft Agent was subsequently created by
Tandy Trower
in an attempt to offer technology that was more flexible and available to third-party developers to include in their applications and web pages.
[
citation needed
]
The software release also included four interactive characters as well as a utility that enables developers to assemble their own characters and interactions.
Microsoft Agent replaced the original Microsoft Actor code in
Office 2000
, although this use did not include Agent's much-touted
speech synthesis
or
recognition
capabilities or any of the four Microsoft Agent sample characters. Instead, the Office team created their own characters, including one named "Clippit" (commonly dubbed "Clippy"). However, Microsoft Bob Actors and Office 97 assistants are incompatible with Office 2000 and later versions, and vice versa.
The current version of Microsoft Agent was quietly released on
MSDN
in 1997.
Technology
[
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]
Microsoft Agent characters are stored in files of the .ACS extension, and can be stored in a number of compressed .ACF files for better
World Wide Web
distribution. Microsoft Office 97 and Microsoft Bob Actor characters are stored in files of the .ACT extension. Microsoft Agent character definition files are stored in files of the .ACD file extension, and are generated by the Microsoft Agent Character Editor.
The speech engine itself is driven by the Microsoft
Speech API (SAPI)
, version 4 and above. Microsoft SAPI provides a control panel for easily installing and switching between various available Text to Speech and Speech to Text engines, as well as voice training and scoring systems to improve the quality and accuracy of both engines.
Microsoft provided four agent characters for free, from downloaded from the Microsoft Agent website. These were called Peedy, Merlin, Genie, and Robby. Some characters also shipped with Microsoft Office up to version 2003 as the
Office Assistants
and with
Windows XP
as search assistants. New Microsoft Agent characters could also be created using Microsoft's development tools, including the Agent Character Editor. Agents can be embedded in software with
Visual Basic for Applications
and in web pages with
VBScript
, and automated tools for the purpose of simplifying this exist. However, web page agents were only compatible with
Internet Explorer
, since alternative browsers like
Opera
or
Mozilla Firefox
do not support
ActiveX
.
Support after Windows XP
[
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]
In
Windows Vista
, Microsoft Agent uses
Speech API
(SAPI) version 5.3 as its primary text-to-speech provider. (In previous versions of Windows, Agent uses SAPI version 4, which is not supported in Windows Vista and later.) Beginning with Vista, multilingual features of Microsoft Agent under a particular language version of the OS are not supported; that is, Agent will function in other languages only under a localized Windows version of the same language.
Microsoft announced in April 2009 that all Microsoft Agent development and support will be discontinued with the release of
Windows 7
.
[2]
Microsoft is no longer offering licenses or distributing the SDK.
However, due to customer feedback, Microsoft provided an installation package of the Microsoft Agent core components for use on Windows 7.
[3]
The download supported SAPI 5.3 compatible speech engines, and also contained the character “Merlin”, which shipped with Windows Vista.
See also
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]
Microsoft
References
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]
External links
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]
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