Introducing Erica, the first fully autonomous artificially intelligent actor in Hollywood.

                                                

The humanoid robot can recognise your laughter, decide whether to laugh back, and then decide whether to giggle or chuckle in response. clever or spooky? 

Erica is an advanced android designed as a research platform to study human-robot interaction. It understands natural language, has a synthesized human-like voice, and can display a variety of facial expressions. Watch on YouTube

Erica will soon be the first artificially intelligent actor to take on the lead role in a film. She will star in the forthcoming sci-fi movie b, the $70 million story of a scientist who has come up with a program to "perfect" human DNA (a la eugenics), which glitches and becomes dangerous. So the scientist must help Erica, the AI organism that he's created, escape the lab.

Erica has the ability to recognise when someone is laughing, determine whether or not it is suitable to laugh back, and pick between two different laughs: a quiet chuckle and a noisy giggle.

Over 80 conversations between the robot and male college students were recorded by the scientists, who had previously used four female actors to control the robot remotely. The numerous laughs were then classified as "social" and "mirthful" after the dialogues had been studied. The computer was then trained to recognise the fundamental differences between each sort of laugh—such as a quieter titter when you're being polite—and to replicate them appropriately.