- Chatbots and assistant programs designed to support conversations with human users rely on natural language processing (NLP). This is a field of scientific research that aims at making computers understand the meaning of sentences in natural language. The algorithms developed by NLP researchers helped power first generation of virtual assistants such as Siri or Cortana. Now the same algorithms are made available to the developer community to help companies build their own specialized virtual assistants. Industry products that offer NLP capabilities based on these algorithms are often called AI engines.
The most powerful and advanced AI engines currently available on the market are (in no particular order): IBM Watson, Google DialogFlow, Microsoft LUIS, Amazon Lex.
- All these engines use intents and entities as primary linguistic identifies to convey the meaning of incoming sentences. All of them offer conversation flow capability. In other words, intents and entities help to understand what the incoming sentence is about. Once the incoming sentence is correctly identified you can use the engine to provide a reply. You can repeat these two steps a large number of times, thus creating a conversation, or dialog.
In terms of language processing ability and simplicity of user experience IBM Watson and Google DialogFlow are currently above the pack. Microsoft LUIS is okay too; still, keeping in mind that Microsoft are aggressively territorial and like when users stay within their ecosystem, it is most efficient to use LUIS together with other Microsoft products such as MS Bot Framework.
Using AI engine conversation flow to create dialogs makes building conversations a simple, almost intuitive, task, with no programming involved. On the flip side, using AI engine conversation flow limits your natural tendency to make conversations rich and natural. The alternative, delegating the conversation flow to the business layer of your chatbot, adds richness and flexibility to your dialog but makes the process more complicated as it now requires programming. Cannot sell a cow and drink the milk at the same time, can you?
Amazon Lex lacks the semantic sophistication of their competitors. One can say (somewhat metaphorically) that IBM Watson was created by linguists and computer scientists while Amazon Lex was created by sales people. As a product it is well packaged and initially looks pleasing on the eye, but once you start digging deeper you notice the limitations. Also, Amazon traditionally excelled in voice recognition component (Amazon Alexa) and not necessarily in actual language processing.
Keep in mind that conversational AI space is so fluid and changes happen so rapidly that any printed information should be taken with a grain of salt a few weeks after it is released.
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What Are AI Engines and How to Choose One?
The most powerful and advanced AI engines currently available on the market are (in no particular order): IBM Watson, Google DialogFlow, Microsoft LUIS, Amazon Lex.
In terms of language processing ability and simplicity of user experience IBM Watson and Google DialogFlow are currently above the pack. Microsoft LUIS is okay too; still, keeping in mind that Microsoft are aggressively territorial and like when users stay within their ecosystem, it is most efficient to use LUIS together with other Microsoft products such as MS Bot Framework.
Using AI engine conversation flow to create dialogs makes building conversations a simple, almost intuitive, task, with no programming involved. On the flip side, using AI engine conversation flow limits your natural tendency to make conversations rich and natural. The alternative, delegating the conversation flow to the business layer of your chatbot, adds richness and flexibility to your dialog but makes the process more complicated as it now requires programming. Cannot sell a cow and drink the milk at the same time, can you?
Amazon Lex lacks the semantic sophistication of their competitors. One can say (somewhat metaphorically) that IBM Watson was created by linguists and computer scientists while Amazon Lex was created by sales people. As a product it is well packaged and initially looks pleasing on the eye, but once you start digging deeper you notice the limitations. Also, Amazon traditionally excelled in voice recognition component (Amazon Alexa) and not necessarily in actual language processing.
Keep in mind that conversational AI space is so fluid and changes happen so rapidly that any printed information should be taken with a grain of salt a few weeks after it is released.