Microsoft Agent: Difference between revisions

Microsoft Agent was a technology developed by [[wikipedia:Microsoft|Microsoft]] that allows for users to interact with animated characters inside applications and web pages. It used text to speech engines to allow the animated characters to speak to the end user. These animated characters were called "Microsoft Agents". It came preinstalled with [[wikipedia:Microsoft_Windows|Windows]] beginning with [[wikipedia:Windows_98|Windows 98]]. Microsoft Agent continued to release alongside all Windows versions until [[wikipedia:Windows_7|Windows 7]] in 2009, following Microsoft's discontinuation of Microsoft Agent. The latest release of Microsoft Agent was version 2.0 on October 12th, 1998.

Microsoft Agent allowed for users of the software to make characters through the [[Microsoft Agent Character Editor]]. Four default characters were made by Microsoft on the original page, including Genie, Merlin, Peedy, and Robby. Some other notable characters are those featured in the [[wikipedia:Microsoft_Office|Microsoft Office suite]] throughout 1997 to 2003, including Clippy, Dot, or Office Logo. The Windows XP search assistants are also Microsoft Agents, including Rover. Another mentionable Microsoft Agent is Bonzi, a purple gorilla that came bundled [[BonziBuddy|BonziBUDDY]] until its discontinuation. The Bonzi character later received a lot of attention after being a meme following multiple meme videos on it before [https://vinesauce.fandom.com/wiki/Joel Vinesauce Joel] eventually streamed an XP destruction causing the popularity of the Bonzi character to rise.

Microsoft Agent characters could be exported in the .ACS file extension and served as the character file. There is also a .ACD format used by MACE that is the project file for the character. The .ACF is another format of a Microsoft Agent character meant for web usage.

Although Microsoft Agent was discontinued following the release of Windows 7 in 2009, it was still able to be used via installing Microsoft Agent's components from the Microsoft Agent installer. This allowed for operating systems that came after [[wikipedia:Windows_Vista|Windows Vista]] to run the software. Microsoft also made a hotfix for Windows 7 that allowed for Microsoft Agent to be installed. This version of Microsoft Agent is the same as version 2.0 but with support for Aero and SAPI 5 as the speech engine. The hotfix link was taken down following the end of support for Windows 7 in 2020.