18486543. COMPUTER-BASED PRIVACY FOR A CHAT GROUP IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT (International Business Machines Corporation)

COMPUTER-BASED PRIVACY FOR A CHAT GROUP IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

Organization Name

International Business Machines Corporation

Inventor(s)

Jun Qian Zhou of Shanghai CN

Dan Zhang of Shanghai CN

Yuan Jie Song of Shanghai CN

Meng Chai of Shanghai CN

Xiao Feng Ji of Shanghai CN

COMPUTER-BASED PRIVACY FOR A CHAT GROUP IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

This abstract first appeared for US patent application 18486543 titled 'COMPUTER-BASED PRIVACY FOR A CHAT GROUP IN A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

Original Abstract Submitted

In an approach to improve the privacy of chat groups within a virtual world, embodiments of the present invention expand a chat area of a chat group to form an experience annulus according to predetermined distance that a voice volume of private-chat-group member can propagate. Responsive to identifying an external user is interested in the chat group, embodiments generate and set a current topic representing a conversation in the chat group as an externally hearable topic that is perceivable by the external user and generate a faux multi-person conversation associated with the externally hearable topic that corresponds to a real conversation made by members in the chat group. Further, embodiments assign the faux utterances to chat group members based on a corresponding speaker index and utilize one or more corresponding avatars of the chat group members to present the faux utterances to the external user.