Chatbots are not a new concept. Earlier technologies using fixed set of input from user to drive conversations or scanned the input message to find keywords and lookup information/responses from database. These were mostly rules based and keyword driven, without understanding the context and meaning of the input message. Based on the input, a predefined programmed response would be provided.
With the advent of AI, Chatbots uses technologies like Natural Language processing to understand the language and intent from the input message and take corrective action. As the system tries to understand the language, users asking the same questions in multiple ways, the system is now able to understand the intent. Once the intent is identified, you can extract the interested topic from the input.
Info – Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of AI to help systems understand, interpret and process human languages.
For instance –
Find the cheapest flight from US to UK is similar to Find me lowest air fare from US to UK.
Here the intent is – cheapest or lowest flight
Topics are – Location: From location – US, To Location UK
Action – Search flights.
An AI open source package or an AI NLP cloud service can be used to develop chatbots. Let’s refer to this as chatbot implementation for future references. We would talk about chatbot implementation in detail in next few sections.