In [Elliott & Ortony1992] the authors discuss the ability of emotionally cognizant agents to model the concerns of one another, and the user. One aspect of these models is that they allow for the modeling of simple relationships between the agents, including the user. To wit, we might define a simple model of friendship as requiring that an agent be happy for another agent when good fortune strikes that other agent, and feel pity when bad fortune strikes. To do this the first agent must have a model of how a situation is presumed to be construed by that other agent. For example, to feel sorry for a friend when her basketball team has lost, it is important to know which team the friend is rooting for. This can only be done if each agent maintains some internal model of each other agent's presumed concerns.
In our current work we have built simple models of friendship and animosity, and to some degree, identification with another agent (i.e., where an agent takes on another's goals as its own.) When this is extended to include the user, interesting possibilities arise, such as those discussed in the next section. How sophisticated a set of relationships can we build based on the emotional interaction of the (human and) automated agents?