conversational AI
In plain wordsThe technology that lets computers hold conversations with people in everyday language, by text or voice. It powers chatbots, voice assistants and automated customer-service lines.
The field and technology of systems that interact with people through natural-language dialogue, by text or speech, over multiple turns. Classic architectures were modular pipelines: speech recognitionspeech recognition, n.: Technology that turns spoken words into written text, as when a phone transcribes a voice message or captions appear automatically under a video., natural language understandingnatural language understanding, n.: The part of language AI concerned with working out what a piece of text means — who did what to whom, what the writer wants and what follows from it — rather than with producing text. (intent detection and slot filling), dialogue-state tracking, a dialogue policy choosing the next system action, natural language generationnatural language generation, n.: Getting computers to produce human language — from turning a spreadsheet into a weather report to writing an essay or a chatbot's reply. and text-to-speechtext-to-speech, n.: Technology that reads written text aloud in a computer-generated voice, used in screen readers, voice assistants, audiobooks and navigation apps.. Task-oriented systems for booking, banking or support were distinguished from open-domain 'chit-chat' systems. Since the early 2020s large language modelslarge language model, n.: A computer program trained on enormous amounts of text to predict the words that come next. At vast scale, that simple skill lets it chat, answer questions, translate, summarize and write code. have largely replaced the pipeline's middle stages, handling understanding, dialogue management and generation in one model, often grounded with retrievalretrieval-augmented generation, n.: Giving an AI an open-book exam: before answering, it looks up relevant passages in a set of documents and bases its reply on them, often citing where each point came from. and toolstool use, n.: An AI model's ability to reach beyond its own knowledge by operating outside tools — searching the web, running code, using a calculator or an app — and folding the results into its work.; speech-to-speech modelsspeech-to-speech model, n.: An AI model that listens to speech and replies or translates directly in speech, without first writing everything down as text, so conversations feel faster and keep the tone of voice. now collapse the audio stages too. The label is mostly industrial; researchers more often say dialogue systems.
The bank's conversational AI handles balance queries by voice and hands complex disputes to a person.
Origin
Research on dialogue systems dates from ELIZAELIZA, prop. n.: A 1960s computer program that chatted by turning a user's own words back into questions, like a therapist. Many users felt understood, though the program understood nothing. (1966) and the frame-based GUS travel-booking system (Daniel Bobrow and colleagues, 1977) through government-funded spoken-dialogue projects around 2000. 'Conversational AI' became a common industry label in the 2010s, when messaging platforms and voice assistants created a market for chatbot-building platforms.
Usage note
Often used as a marketing umbrella for chatbotschatbot, n.: Software you chat with in ordinary language, by typing or talking, as you would with a person. The newest ones, such as ChatGPT, can answer questions, draft writing and keep long conversations going. and virtual assistantsvirtual assistant, n.: Software you speak or type to, like Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, that answers questions and does simple jobs such as setting timers, playing music or controlling smart-home devices.. 'Conversational' describes the interface, not the depth of understanding behind it.
Related
- chatbotchatbot, n.: Software you chat with in ordinary language, by typing or talking, as you would with a person. The newest ones, such as ChatGPT, can answer questions, draft writing and keep long conversations going.
- virtual assistantvirtual assistant, n.: Software you speak or type to, like Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, that answers questions and does simple jobs such as setting timers, playing music or controlling smart-home devices.
- AI assistantAI assistant, n.: An AI program, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, that helps a person through conversation: answering questions, writing, summarizing, coding and, increasingly, taking actions on their behalf.
- natural language understandingnatural language understanding, n.: The part of language AI concerned with working out what a piece of text means — who did what to whom, what the writer wants and what follows from it — rather than with producing text.
- speech recognitionspeech recognition, n.: Technology that turns spoken words into written text, as when a phone transcribes a voice message or captions appear automatically under a video.
- speech-to-speech modelspeech-to-speech model, n.: An AI model that listens to speech and replies or translates directly in speech, without first writing everything down as text, so conversations feel faster and keep the tone of voice.
- ELIZAELIZA, prop. n.: A 1960s computer program that chatted by turning a user's own words back into questions, like a therapist. Many users felt understood, though the program understood nothing.
- natural language processingnatural language processing, n.: The field that teaches computers to handle human language — to read, interpret, translate, summarize and produce text and speech. It is one of the oldest and largest areas of artificial intelligence.
Mentioned in
chatbotchatbot, n.: Software you chat with in ordinary language, by typing or talking, as you would with a person. The newest ones, such as ChatGPT, can answer questions, draft writing and keep long conversations going., chat modelchat model, n.: A language model trained to hold a back-and-forth conversation, keeping track of who said what and replying as a helpful assistant. It is the engine inside chat apps., virtual assistantvirtual assistant, n.: Software you speak or type to, like Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, that answers questions and does simple jobs such as setting timers, playing music or controlling smart-home devices.