The rise of powerful large language models (LLMs) brings about tremendous opportunities
for innovation but also looming risks for individuals and society at large. We have reached a …

Large language models (LLMs) powered conversational search systems have already been
used by hundreds of millions of people, and are believed to bring many benefits over …

Modern information-seeking systems are becoming more interactive, mainly through asking
Clarifying Questions (CQs) to refine users' information needs. System-generated CQs may …

Image search is an essential and user-friendly method to explore vast galleries of digital
images. However, existing image search methods heavily rely on proximity measurements …

Collaborative search supports multiple users working together to accomplish a specific
search task. Research has found that designing lightweight collaborative search plugins …

The rapid advancement of natural language processing (NLP) research has led to various
applications spanning a wide range of domains that require models to interact with humans …

In the last decade, conversational search has attracted considerable attention. However,
most research has focused on systems that can support a\emph {single} searcher. In this …

Conversational agents have gained widespread popularity due to their ability to simulate
and sustain contextual conversations. Prior works predominantly focused on computational …

Advanced sensing capabilities are emerging in smart conversational systems. Without
support, keyword-based searching can be challenging, requiring expertise, experience and …

It is a fact of life for many start-ups that they must sell part of their company (ie, fund raising)
in order to have enough capital to grow the company to one day successfully exit the market …