Conversational AI
In short
Conversational AI is technology that holds natural conversations in written or spoken language. It understands the intent behind an input and responds meaningfully - the foundation behind chatbots, voicebots and AI phone assistants.
The building blocks behind it
Conversational AI combines natural language understanding (NLU), a language model that generates replies, and a dialogue context that remembers earlier turns. For the phone, speech recognition and speech synthesis are added on top.
Text or voice
In chat, conversational AI runs as text; on the phone, as voice. In both cases the point is to understand freely worded requests and respond appropriately, instead of reacting only to keywords.
Frequently asked questions
No. Conversational AI is the technology; a chatbot is one application of it. Voicebots and AI phone assistants are also built on conversational AI.
Modern models cope well with varied phrasing, accents and colloquial speech, though very strong dialect can still be a challenge.
Related terms
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