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This is weird, to me. I edited the article, just left out marketing/techno stuff. P.
Sad, Lonely? For a Good Time, Call Vivienne* By KEITH BRADSHER, NY Times
HONG KONG, Feb. 18 - Men, are you tired of the time, trouble and expense of having a girlfriend? Irritated by the difficulty of finding a new one? Eberhard Schöneburg, the chief executive of the software maker Artificial Life Inc. of Hong Kong, may have found the answer: a virtual girlfriend named Vivienne who goes wherever you go.
Vivienne likes to be taken to movies and bars. She loves to be given virtual flowers and chocolates, and she can translate six languages if you travel overseas. She never undresses, although she has some skimpy outfits for the gym, and is a tease who draws the line at anything beyond blowing kisses. If you marry her in a virtual ceremony, you even end up with a virtual mother-in-law who really does call you in the middle of the night on your cellphone to ask where you are and whether you have been treating her daughter right.
Vivienne, the product of computerized voice synthesis, streaming video and text messages, is meant not only to bring business to Artificial Life (she will be available for a monthly fee of $6, not including the airtime costs paid to cellphone operators or the price of virtual chocolates and flowers). But she is also meant to be a lure for the new, higher-tech, third generation, or 3G, cellphones. Vivienne, who may soon be joined by a virtual boyfriend for women and, after that, a virtual boyfriend for gay men and a virtual girlfriend for lesbians, is at the leading edge of a wave of services that companies are developing to take advantage of the much faster data transmission rates made possible by 3G technology.
She can converse on 35,000 topics, from philosophy to movies to sculpture. Artificial Life tweaked and reused close to 70,000 questions and answers on banking alone for Vivienne - those questions were developed for an unrelated contract for a Swiss private bank.
Artificial Life has already run into delays in introducing Vivienne to men in Asia and Europe. It originally hoped to have her flirting on cellphone screens by last Christmas. The problems have ranged from the cosmetic - Vivienne is being reprogrammed not to bare her navel or display body piercings in conservative Muslim countries like Malaysia - to the technological. She is now scheduled to become available, so to speak, in Singapore and Malaysia by the end of April, in Western Europe by late spring and possibly in a few American cities by the end of the year.
"It's a little bit for the losers," said Rick Wong, a 32-year-old off-duty security guard, who nonetheless added that, "even people who have girlfriends, well, girlfriends are not perfect, so they may play anyway."
Vivienne's largest database is for processing those difficult conversations about romance and intimacy. "People will see that they can't have sex with her, but they'll try to," and Vivienne has many ways to hold them off, Mr. Schöneburg said. Vivienne is fairly prudish, partly because Artificial Life is hoping the market will include teenagers from affluent families. Artificial Life has been contacted by companies interested in the development of a racier version, and perhaps even a pornographic version, and may license the technology but will not enter that market itself.
Partly to prevent anyone from becoming addicted to Vivienne's charms, the program will limit users to an hour of play time a day. Even an hour could be costly. The monthly fee will not include airtime for the data - a big incentive for cellphone operators to offer the service, notwithstanding recent questions about whether teenagers have been running up excessive cellphone bills even without virtual relationships.
Users eager to advance quickly toward a virtual kiss or even marriage should know that she has a faintly mercenary appreciation for gifts, from flowers and chocolates to cars and diamond rings. Some virtual gifts are free, but others will require users to make real charges against their monthly phone bills of 50 cents to $2. "The money goes to us," Mr. Schöneburg said, grinning at the prospect of lovelorn suitors around the world paying real money to woo a computer program.
Vivienne does offer a way to test out approaches to a virtual woman before trying them in reality. "If you buy her a membership to a gym, she may take offense and say, 'What, am I too big for you?' " Mr. Schöneburg said. AQrtificial Life is not suggesting Vivienne is any substitute for a flesh-and-blood girlfriend. "I hope they think of her as a companion," said MaryAnna Donaldson, the company's creative content editor, "and will see her as a practice round before the real one."
Sad, Lonely? For a Good Time, Call Vivienne* By KEITH BRADSHER, NY Times
HONG KONG, Feb. 18 - Men, are you tired of the time, trouble and expense of having a girlfriend? Irritated by the difficulty of finding a new one? Eberhard Schöneburg, the chief executive of the software maker Artificial Life Inc. of Hong Kong, may have found the answer: a virtual girlfriend named Vivienne who goes wherever you go.
Vivienne likes to be taken to movies and bars. She loves to be given virtual flowers and chocolates, and she can translate six languages if you travel overseas. She never undresses, although she has some skimpy outfits for the gym, and is a tease who draws the line at anything beyond blowing kisses. If you marry her in a virtual ceremony, you even end up with a virtual mother-in-law who really does call you in the middle of the night on your cellphone to ask where you are and whether you have been treating her daughter right.
Vivienne, the product of computerized voice synthesis, streaming video and text messages, is meant not only to bring business to Artificial Life (she will be available for a monthly fee of $6, not including the airtime costs paid to cellphone operators or the price of virtual chocolates and flowers). But she is also meant to be a lure for the new, higher-tech, third generation, or 3G, cellphones. Vivienne, who may soon be joined by a virtual boyfriend for women and, after that, a virtual boyfriend for gay men and a virtual girlfriend for lesbians, is at the leading edge of a wave of services that companies are developing to take advantage of the much faster data transmission rates made possible by 3G technology.
She can converse on 35,000 topics, from philosophy to movies to sculpture. Artificial Life tweaked and reused close to 70,000 questions and answers on banking alone for Vivienne - those questions were developed for an unrelated contract for a Swiss private bank.
Artificial Life has already run into delays in introducing Vivienne to men in Asia and Europe. It originally hoped to have her flirting on cellphone screens by last Christmas. The problems have ranged from the cosmetic - Vivienne is being reprogrammed not to bare her navel or display body piercings in conservative Muslim countries like Malaysia - to the technological. She is now scheduled to become available, so to speak, in Singapore and Malaysia by the end of April, in Western Europe by late spring and possibly in a few American cities by the end of the year.
"It's a little bit for the losers," said Rick Wong, a 32-year-old off-duty security guard, who nonetheless added that, "even people who have girlfriends, well, girlfriends are not perfect, so they may play anyway."
Vivienne's largest database is for processing those difficult conversations about romance and intimacy. "People will see that they can't have sex with her, but they'll try to," and Vivienne has many ways to hold them off, Mr. Schöneburg said. Vivienne is fairly prudish, partly because Artificial Life is hoping the market will include teenagers from affluent families. Artificial Life has been contacted by companies interested in the development of a racier version, and perhaps even a pornographic version, and may license the technology but will not enter that market itself.
Partly to prevent anyone from becoming addicted to Vivienne's charms, the program will limit users to an hour of play time a day. Even an hour could be costly. The monthly fee will not include airtime for the data - a big incentive for cellphone operators to offer the service, notwithstanding recent questions about whether teenagers have been running up excessive cellphone bills even without virtual relationships.
Users eager to advance quickly toward a virtual kiss or even marriage should know that she has a faintly mercenary appreciation for gifts, from flowers and chocolates to cars and diamond rings. Some virtual gifts are free, but others will require users to make real charges against their monthly phone bills of 50 cents to $2. "The money goes to us," Mr. Schöneburg said, grinning at the prospect of lovelorn suitors around the world paying real money to woo a computer program.
Vivienne does offer a way to test out approaches to a virtual woman before trying them in reality. "If you buy her a membership to a gym, she may take offense and say, 'What, am I too big for you?' " Mr. Schöneburg said. AQrtificial Life is not suggesting Vivienne is any substitute for a flesh-and-blood girlfriend. "I hope they think of her as a companion," said MaryAnna Donaldson, the company's creative content editor, "and will see her as a practice round before the real one."
Or that demon guy from Devil May Cry is pretty hot, too.
