Robo-Identity: Exploring Artificial Identity and Emotion via Speech Interactions

Abstract

Following the success of the first edition of Robo-Identity, the second edition will provide an opportunity to expand the discussion about artificial identity. This year, we are focusing on emotions that are expressed through speech and voice. Synthetic voices of robots can resemble and are becoming indistinguishable from expressive human voices. This can be an opportunity and a constraint in expressing emotional speech that can (falsely) convey a human-like identity that can mislead people, leading to ethical issues. How should we envision an agent's artificial identity? In what ways should we have robots that maintain a machine-like stance, e.g., through robotic speech, and should emotional expressions that are increasingly human-like be seen as design opportunities? These are not mutually exclusive concerns. As this discussion needs to be conducted in a multidisciplinary manner, we welcome perspectives on challenges and opportunities from variety of fields. For this year's edition, the special theme will be “speech, emotion and artificial identity”.