William Swartout is Chief Technology Officer at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), co-Director of the Center for Generative AI and Society, and a research professor in the Computer Science Department at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Swartout has been involved in AI research and applications throughout his career. In 2009, Swartout received the Robert Engelmore Award from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) for seminal contributions to knowledge-based systems and explanation, groundbreaking research on virtual human technologies and their applications, and outstanding service to the artificial intelligence community.

Swartout is a Fellow of the AAAI, has served on their Board of Councilors and is past chair of the Special Interest Group on Artificial Intelligence (SIGART) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Prior to helping found the ICT in 1999, Swartout was the Director of the Intelligent Systems Division at the USC Information Sciences Institute. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from MIT and his bachelor’s degree from Stanford University.