AI-based dialogue systems

Understanding natural language is one of the challenges that AI systems are now increasingly able to master. For example, language technologies are increasingly being used by call centres to respond to customer enquiries by email or telephone.

Customer enquiries sent by email, for example, are processed by AI systems so that complaints can reach the right contact person or information requests are answered automatically. Call centre employees can also be supported by an AI system when providing information over the phone.

Audio-based enquiries are automatically converted into text in order to find a suitable answer in a knowledge base. The performance of speech technologies even goes so far that the AI is able to conduct a conversation independently. The similarity to natural language has become deceptively real, so that humans can hardly distinguish a speech-based dialogue system with AI from a real person. Google presented the Duplex dialogue system in May 2018. However, Duplex is currently only able to carry out conversations in English and only in simple and predictable situations, such as arranging a hair appointment. More complex dialogues with ambiguous statements are not possible with Duplex.