Evaluation of Prosodic Features Suitable for Conversational Agents Replying with a Joke

Abstract

Conversational agents are becoming popular in various daily situations. To make agents more user-friendly in the future, we are studying ways to make them more humorous. Our proposed interaction style for the agents is to perform boke (performing jokes) and tsukkomi (butting to jokes) based on Japanese manzai during communication with the user. To improve this style, we focus on the prosodic features of the agent's voice which affect the user's impression of a agent. The results of the experiment suggest that the user's sense of humor, friendliness, and motivation to continue the conversation may be improved by making the agent's voice speed normal and the pitch high. Also, it was suggested that the faster speed for the agent's voice may not be suitable for improving the user's sense of humor, familiarity, and motivation to continue the conversation.