| You may stand in line at the mall to see the real | | | | flash animated Santa Clause that sits behind the |
| Santa, but more and more kids spend sometimes | | | | counter of a 'milk and cookies bar' ready to take |
| up to one hour chatting with a Virtual Santa Claus | | | | your order. |
| online. There are now plenty of online chat-bots | | | | What do kids say to a Virtual Santa Clause? |
| talking to literally hundreds of thousands of | | | | Kids will say about anything to Santa, and a unique |
| children during the Christmas season. | | | | insight into how kids interact with the Santa Claus |
| It's known that children feel comfortable talking to | | | | bots online can be found in the statistics and |
| Santa, but that's also true for an automated | | | | trends collected from them. |
| Santa software on the Internet. So, who are | | | | - The average time spend chatting with Santa is |
| these artificial Santa Clauses? Where do you find | | | | 18 minutes |
| them? And, what are the children saying to them? | | | | - Some conversations have lasted over 60 |
| Who are these Santa Clauses? | | | | minutes |
| Various types of Santa bots exist online - from | | | | - The popular questions year after year: "Are you |
| purely text based to fully-animated talking avatars | | | | real", "Sing me a song", "Do you know any jokes", |
| of Santa Claus. | | | | "Can you take off your beard?", "Where is Mrs |
| - The famous is a text-based chatbot using an | | | | Claus" |
| Instant Message (IM) interface like MSN | | | | - New questions asked this season, most probably |
| messenger or ICQ that kids a comfortable with. | | | | due to the economic downturn - "a job for my |
| - The Santa bot developed by the A.L.I.C.E. | | | | daddy", "can you send us money" |
| foundation has a talking Santa head with a deep | | | | - One chat in ten includes some form of insult. But |
| robot voice, text-to-speech, so you can actually | | | | kids will also usually be quick to apologize and ask |
| hear Santa talk back to you. | | | | Santa not to get angry |
| - Santa lives also in virtual worlds, such as one | | | | - Almost gone are the bicycles and roller blades. |