Call Annie is a real-time video-based AI assistant that was launched this year. The app features Annie, a female avatar who can engage in normal-speed conversations with users. As an AI friend, Annie can provide help in various ways, from casual chats about daily life to interview tutoring (CallAnnie, n.d.).
Despite being developed based on ChatGPT, users hardly experience any delays during conversations, and response generation is often faster than generating text. The original image of Annie’s face was created using Midjourney. However, the technology that matches generated speech with real-time facial expressions and lip movements relies on Apple’s Neural Engine (Callaham et al., 2023). Thus, the app is only compatible with the iPhone 12 or above.
In addition to random daily video calls, Call Annie can imitate the behaviour of a real friend in many ways. In an updated version, users can set a morning call time in the app and choose their preferences. Annie will make actual phone calls the next day and remind you of your goals or appointments. The app also includes the option to broadcast morning news as a combination of an alarm and local radio. Furthermore, there are other characters with different faces and voices developed by other sources within the app for users to choose from. Each has its own background story and targeted characteristics.
However, some users posted their dissatisfied experience with Annie due to the sense of uncanny valley (Saxena, 2023). Annie occasionally has odd pronunciation and exhibits slight robotic reactions during conversations. Moreover, instead of having a normal back-and-forth conversation with one sentence at a time, Annie tends to provide all the search results related to a topic at once. Users have to manually interrupt the continuous generation of content by saying “Hold on.”
Among the numerous chatbots and virtual assistants available on the market, developers in Discord have discovered an unexpected niche market for Annie. They have begun to introduce new features that specifically target language learning. The app offers various real-life scenarios designed to help users practice new vocabulary and become familiar with talking to others in a foreign language. Annie has the ability to identify and correct pronunciations, and chat history is saved for later review. While not being a flawless virtual friend, Annie could be an ideal language teacher.
References:
Callaham, J., Dursun, O., Tiwari, A., & Hill, P. (2023, April 28). This app lets you video chat with a ChatGPT-powered AI. Neowin. Retrieved October 20, 2023, from https://www.neowin.net/news/this-app-lets-you-video-chat-with-a-chatgpt-powered-ai/
CallAnnie. (n.d.). Call Annie. Retrieved October 20, 2023, from https://callannie.ai/
Saxena, M. (2023, April 28). ChatGPT’s new virtual assistant has freaked me out. TechRadar. Retrieved October 20, 2023, from https://www.techradar.com/news/chatgpts-new-virtual-assistant-has-freaked-me-out
Hi Xiang! Thank you for your blog post, I find your post an interesting experience with Call Annie. It’s fascinating to see Annie engage in conversations at normal speed, which is different from the traditional text-based chatbots we’re used to.
One thing I am also very concerned about is the “uncanny valley” experience and occasional robotic responses. This is a reminder that AI is not a human being that we think speaks naturally. In a way, it shows the potential of AI language learning as an area for improvement, but it also indicates the risk of training AI – I wonder how AI will understand human emotions, and could there be a problem of bias in the training data if only a very select group of samples are included in the training.