Method and System for Retrieving, Selecting, and Presenting Compelling Stories form Online Sources
First Claim
1. A method for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising:
- (a) retrieving documents likely to contain stories from the online sources;
(b) extracting candidate stories from the documents; and
(c) filtering the candidate stories to identify stories with predefined levels of sentiment;
(d) preparing the filtered stories for spoken presentation by animated characters; and
(e) presenting the prepared stories using computer generated speech by the animated characters.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The invention provides a method and system for automatically retrieving, selecting, and presenting compelling stories from online sources. The system mines the online sources and collects texts that are likely to contain compelling stories. The system then extracts candidate stories from them and transforms these candidate stories to make them appropriate for presentation. The candidate stories are then passed through a set of filters to focus the system on stories with a heightened emotional state. Techniques are used to ensure retrieval of appropriate and meaningful content for the performance of the stories. The modified and filtered stories are then prepared for presentation, including marked up with speech and animation cues, gender classification, and dramatic Adaptive Retrieval Charts (or ARCs). These ARCs allow for various performance types from an ongoing performance of multiple actors in a physical installation to single actor performance of a single story for an online system.
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Citations
50 Claims
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1. A method for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising:
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(a) retrieving documents likely to contain stories from the online sources; (b) extracting candidate stories from the documents; and (c) filtering the candidate stories to identify stories with predefined levels of sentiment; (d) preparing the filtered stories for spoken presentation by animated characters; and (e) presenting the prepared stories using computer generated speech by the animated characters. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24)
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25. A method for providing compelling stores from online sources, comprising:
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(a) forming queries to retrieve documents from the online sources containing query terms and structural cues indicative of a type of story; (b) running the queries using search engines; (c) finding occurrences of the query terms and structural cues in the retrieved documents; and (d) for each occurrence, searching for a first natural breaking point and a second natural breaking point following the first natural breaking point, wherein a section of text between the first and second natural breaking points comprise a candidate story. - View Dependent Claims (26, 27, 28, 29)
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30. A method for providing compelling stories from online sources:
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(a) obtaining candidate stories extracted from documents retrieved from the online sources, wherein the documents are retrieved using a query comprising query terms and structural cues indicative of a type of story; (b) for each candidate story, determining if the structural cues are present; (c) for each candidate story, determining if the structural cues appear in a first sentence; and (d) eliminating the candidate stories in which the structural cues are not present or where the structural cues do not appear in the first sentence. - View Dependent Claims (31)
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32. A method for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising:
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(a) obtaining candidate stories extracted from the online sources; (b) labeling documents within a corpus with sentiment ratings; (c) removing the documents within the corpus labeled with a neutral sentiment rating; (d) building a statistical representation of the remaining documents in the corpus, wherein the remaining documents in the corpus are separated into a positive group and a negative group; (e) creating an affect query as a representation of a target candidate story, wherein the affect query is created by selecting words in the target candidate story that exhibit the greatest statistical variance between the positive and the negative documents in the statistical representation; (f) using the affect query to retrieve affectively similar documents from the corpus; (g) combining the labels from the retrieved documents to derive an affect score for the target candidate story; and (h) if the affect score is not within a predetermined range of values, then eliminating the target candidate story from the candidate stories.
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33. A method for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising:
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(a) obtaining a candidate story extracted from the online sources; (b) identifying indicators of a gender of an author of the candidate story, wherein the indicators comprise self-referential roles, physical states, and relationships; (c) determining if the indicators agree on the gender of the author; (d) if the indicators agree on the gender of the author, then classifying the candidate story with the gender; (e) presenting the candidate story using computer generated speech by an animated character with the gender.
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34. A method for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising:
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(a) obtaining candidates stories extracted from the online sources; (b) modifying the candidate stories to improve readability by a text-to-speech engine, wherein the modifications comprise; removal of any parenthetical, bracketed or braced content, condensation of adjacent punctuation, alternation of any numbers, date, or monetary amounts to be readable by the text-to-speech engine, and expansion of acronyms or abbreviations; and (c) presenting the modified candidate stories using computer generated speech by animated characters.
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35. A method for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising:
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(a) obtaining candidate stories extracted from the online sources; (b) determining which sentences of the candidate stories are highly affective and which emotion the sentences are characterized by; (c) marking up the highly affective sentences, such that the marked sentences have more emphasis in a presentation of computer generated speech by animated characters; and (d) presenting the marked up stories using the computer generated speech by the animated characters. - View Dependent Claims (36)
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37. A system for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising:
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a retrieval engine for retrieving documents likely to contain stories from the online sources and for extracting candidate stories from the documents; a filtering and modification engine for filtering the candidate stories to identify stories with predefined levels of sentiment and for preparing the filtered stories for spoken presentation by animated characters; and a presentation engine for presenting the prepared stories using computer generated speech by animated characters. - View Dependent Claims (38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49)
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50. A computer readable medium with program instructions for providing compelling stories from online sources, comprising instructions for:
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(a) retrieving documents likely to contain stories from the online sources; (b) extracting candidate stories from the documents; and (c) filtering the candidate stories to identify stories with predefined levels of sentiment; (d) preparing the filtered stories for spoken presentation by animated characters; and (e) presenting the prepared stories using computer generated speech by the animated characters.
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Specification