Editing Avatar (computing) (section)

===Online assistants===
[[File:Automated online assistant.png|thumb|170px|An avatar used by an [[automated online assistant]] providing [[customer service]] on a web page]]

Avatars can be used as virtual embodiments of [[embodied agent]]s, which are driven more or less by [[artificial intelligence]] rather than real people. [[Automated online assistant]]s are examples of avatars used in this way.

Such avatars are used by organizations as a part of [[automated customer service]]s in order to interact with consumers and users of services. This can avail for enterprises to reduce their operating and training cost.<ref name=Kongthon/> A major underlying technology to such systems is [[natural language processing]].<ref name=Kongthon>[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1643823.1643908 Implementing an online help desk system based on conversational agent] Authors: Alisa Kongthon, Chatchawal Sangkeettrakarn, Sarawoot Kongyoung and Choochart Haruechaiyasak. Published by ACM 2009 Article, Bibliometrics Data  Bibliometrics. Published in: Proceeding, MEDES '09 Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems, ACM New York, NY, USA. {{ISBN|978-1-60558-829-2}}, {{doi|10.1145/1643823.1643908}}</ref> Some of these avatars are commonly known as "bots". Famous examples include [[IKEA]]'s Anna, an avatar designed to guide users around the IKEA website.

Such avatars can also be powered by a [[digital conversation]] which provides a little more structure than those using NLP, offering the user options and clearly defined paths to an outcome. This kind of avatar is known as a Structured Language Processing or SLP Avatar.