Toward Natural and Companionable Virtual Agents via Cross-Temporal Emotional Modeling
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866910223640297472 |
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| author | Qin, Feier Li, Xiao Zheng, Yi Huang, Haibin Wang, Hanyao Wang, Xiaoyu Lu, Yan Zhang, Yuan |
| author_facet | Qin, Feier Li, Xiao Zheng, Yi Huang, Haibin Wang, Hanyao Wang, Xiaoyu Lu, Yan Zhang, Yuan |
| contents | Recent advances in foundation models have enabled conversational agents that aim for sustained companionship rather than mere task completion. Yet most still remain unable to support natural, long-term companion-like interactions, resulting in experiences that feel episodic and inauthentic. We argue that current agents overlooked cross-temporal modeling of agents' social behaviors and internal emotions: generated behaviors rarely influence an agent's emotional state, and emotional states seldom shape subsequent behaviors. We present Cross-Temporal Emotion Modeling (CTEM), a framework that links long-term behavioral history to moment-to-moment emotional expression. CTEM establishes a closed loop where past experiences update an evolving emotional state; this state conditions immediate interactions; and user feedback continually revises both memory and emotional state, enabling reflection and anticipation. We instantiate CTEM as Auri, a companion agent on an instant-messaging platform, and report a 21-day in-the-wild study showing that CTEM shows improvements in perceived naturalness, coherence, and emotional harmony. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_15812 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Toward Natural and Companionable Virtual Agents via Cross-Temporal Emotional Modeling Qin, Feier Li, Xiao Zheng, Yi Huang, Haibin Wang, Hanyao Wang, Xiaoyu Lu, Yan Zhang, Yuan Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence Recent advances in foundation models have enabled conversational agents that aim for sustained companionship rather than mere task completion. Yet most still remain unable to support natural, long-term companion-like interactions, resulting in experiences that feel episodic and inauthentic. We argue that current agents overlooked cross-temporal modeling of agents' social behaviors and internal emotions: generated behaviors rarely influence an agent's emotional state, and emotional states seldom shape subsequent behaviors. We present Cross-Temporal Emotion Modeling (CTEM), a framework that links long-term behavioral history to moment-to-moment emotional expression. CTEM establishes a closed loop where past experiences update an evolving emotional state; this state conditions immediate interactions; and user feedback continually revises both memory and emotional state, enabling reflection and anticipation. We instantiate CTEM as Auri, a companion agent on an instant-messaging platform, and report a 21-day in-the-wild study showing that CTEM shows improvements in perceived naturalness, coherence, and emotional harmony. |
| title | Toward Natural and Companionable Virtual Agents via Cross-Temporal Emotional Modeling |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15812 |