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Alexa, What’s The Technology Behind You?

amazon-alexa

It was the early 90’s when speech recognition first took off with significant DARPA funding being invested in various research projects conducted by the top universities. However, the data available at that time was simply not sufficient for the technology to grow on. But that changed over the last decade due to substantial digital advancements that led to the availability of data at hand to train models. The biggest milestone achieved in the sphere of voice recognition technology is the Amazon Alexa that has used extremely complex machine learning processes to revolutionize the way we conduct everyday tasks.

Last year, Amazon opened up its technology behind Alexa, called the Lex. The system combines natural language understanding technology with automatic speech recognition and can be used by developers who want to build their own conversational applications like a chatbot. According to Amazon, the technology can be used to serve a variety of purposes especially web and mobile applications.

alexa-voice-text
image:techcrunch.com

So How Does This Technology Works?

1. Signalling Process

It all starts with the signal processing. This allows the device to make sense of the audio input by cleaning the signal. It’s one of the most crucial challenges in far-field audio. The primary objective is to recognise the target signal which can only be done by first identifying and minimizing ambient noises like the TV or the dishwasher. These issues are handled through beamforming which uses seven microphones to identify the source of the signal so that the device can focus on it. Moreover, acoustic echo cancellation knows when it’s playing and can eliminate that signal so only the important signal is left.

alexa-signalling-process

2. Wake Word Detection

Once the signalling is done the next task is Wake Word Detection. It determines if the user has said one of the words for which the device is programmed to turn on, such as ‘Alexa’. This is very important as voice commands could be picked from conversations around and may result in accidental purchases and angry customers. Furthermore, it needs to identify pronunciation differences as well and that too with limited CPU power and everything needs to be quick, so it requires high accuracy and low latency.

alexa-word-detection

3. Audio To Text Conversion

If the wake word is detected, the signal is then sent to the speech recognition software in the cloud. Here the audio is converted into text format. This process is performed by converting a binary classification problem into a sequence-to-sequence problem. It needs to browse through all the words in the English language to determine the input and produce the desired output. That’s huge, and the cloud is the only technology capable of scaling it sufficiently. The input is not a one-word query. It can be any possible question and therefore you need the context of it.

alexa-conversion

4. Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Natural Language Understanding (NLU) is used to convert text into a meaningful representation. So, let’s say you ask for the weather in New York. Here, the intent would be weather and New York. But, the problem pops up with cross-domain intent classification. For example, if someone said ‘play remind me’, this is very different to remind me to go play. However, it could easily be misinterpreted. Additionally, there are a lot of commonly used words which sound the same but has completely different meanings. Like ‘BY’ can be misinterpreted as ‘BUY’ leading to unwanted consequences. Out-of-domain utterances are also eliminated at this stage if they don’t make any sense. This prevents the device from mistakenly hearing commands from televisions and the likes.

alexa-naturalimage:techcrunch.com

Researchers are working constantly to improve the speech recognition software. Further improvements will see Alexa better hold a conversation, remember what a person has said previously, and applying that knowledge to consequent interactions. Get into a discussion with our technology experts and analyse the future of Alexa.

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Technology

What Are The Key Components Of A Flawless Chatbots?

Chatbots

Any business that wishes to reach new heights of success relies heavily on its customer service. No matter how good your product or service is, a poor or average customer service can cause a serious dent in its success. For long, humans proved to be the best option when it comes to customer service representatives. However, customer-centric chatbots are quickly taking their place. Communication is the key to any successful business and that’s the reason why several marketing top heads are integrating AI-enabled chatbots into their system.

Today, when a visitor lands on a webpage, a chatbot welcomes him with a message. This creates a positive impact on the customers and engages them in a conversation with the company. The leading developers across the world have developed amazingly intelligent Chatbots that can quickly process all kind of information like text, photos, videos etc. So what should you keep in mind while making a chatbot for your website? Here are a few key ingredients to make a perfect chatbot.

1. Contextual Understanding

The biggest challenge while automating human communication is to understand the contextual meaning of a statement. For this, the chatbots need a much higher level of intelligence which will enable it to extract the real context from a customer’s statement. It must analyze a number of variables like conversation history, date, day, tone etc. present in a customer’s statement. These variables vary from customer to customer. Intelligent chatbots can effectively streamline the internal communication process to strengthen the customer support.

2. Comprehendible Responses

No matter how intelligent these chatbots become, the key to their success will always be how human-like they are. When visitors land on a webpage and start interacting with these bots they must feel as if they are really interacting with a human being. To ensure this, it’s essential to maintain a particular tone and dialect while talking. The focus should predominantly be on creating a natural communication process with responses that are clearly understood by the visitors.

3. Predefined General Responses

Chatbots must be designed to not only give custom replies, but they can provide general responses based on a predefined mechanism. These flows are designed in order to take the users from introduction stage to conversation. An AI-enabled chatbot must be used to enhance this marketing mechanism and save time for the customer support desk. Predefined responses will help in gathering the initially required information hence shortening the customer support process. Chatbots are most used in the banking and healthcare sectors where it has helped a lot in saving time. An analysis showed that chatbots helped in saving almost 4 mins per customer in comparison to a phone call. This can help these sectors save billions of dollars every year.

4. Data Gathering Tool

Chatbot is an amazing data gathering tool. Brainstorm and zero down on the key data metrics that you would like to collect from your customers and design your chatbot in a way that it captures this information. For example – Ask the zipcode from your customers to know their location. You can collect information about their shopping preferences to push relevant information to them. Information about their eating habits, shopping preferences, exercise habits etc. will help you to push relevant offers and promotions to them.

5. Constant Evaluation and Updation

This is the most important component to consider while developing a chatbot or for that matter any new application or feature. Chatbots are pretty new, which means there is a huge scope for improvement and enhancement. Keep a close eye on your competitors. Figure out what they are doing well and implement it in your chatbot strategy. Pick out the innovative features and see if you can use it in your chatbots. Also, learn from their mistakes and shortcomings. Monitor your app on a regular basis and evaluate it thoroughly. Determine the scope of optimization based on your overall goals.

Concluding Remarks

A chatbot is a brilliant digital marketing tool which can boost the conversion ratio of any business. It also is a cost-effective alternative to human customer service representatives and has a very bright future ahead. The only tricky part is to maintain a balance between the automation and human aspect. No matter how much the technology grows, human touch will never lose its value. The upcoming few years will be very exciting and it would be real fun watching these chatbots evolve. Talk to our experts to know more about chatbots and discuss your digital media requirements.

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Blog Technology

Myths We Need To Break About Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

The news about Facebook shutting down its Artificial Intelligence program spread like wild fire recently. The news was shocking to most of the people but there were some faces carrying an “as expected” grin. Artificial Intelligence was not in good books of many tech heads and industry experts. Even though this technology was considered revolutionary, it had its share of opposition. The term Artificial Intelligence is known to almost everyone that has a touch base with technology. However, only a handful really understand the concept and use of Artificial Intelligence. This has sprouted a lot of myths around the newly developed concept. Let’s try to break a few of the common myths about Artificial Intelligence.

Myth 1: Artificial Intelligence Will Replace Humans

The biggest myth about AI is that it is a superior option as against human labor. With a misconception that AI can do everything that humans can do, people are panicking about human labor being replaced by cheap robots. People carry a misconception that robots powered by AI can replicate human skill sets and capabilities. However, Artificial Intelligence has far fewer skill sets as compared to humans and is designed only to complete certain specific tasks.

Another misconception regarding AI is that all the jobs that require low skill set will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Whereas, AI is designed to perform more complicated tasks such as monitoring, planning, repairing machines etc. rather than performing manual jobs that require a low skill set. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence lacks emotions and instinct which are cutting edge weapons for humans while performing any task.

Myth 2: A Conscious Machine Is Just A snap Away

The tech heads behind the development of AI are highly enthusiastic about one feature that is consciousness. The advancements in technology and rapid innovations in the field of Artificial Intelligence paint a very rosy picture for AI enthusiasts. Based on the current scenario, people believe that a machine that can think independently, showcase emotions & creativity on free will with a high level of consciousness is just around the corner.

But the fact is that we are still fancying our chances in understanding the neuroscience of consciousness. There has not been any remarkable breakthrough in this field and thus the aforementioned myth holds no ground. We might have scaled new heights in technology but our ability to render consciousness electronically is virtually nil. We still have an upper hand in the battle against robots.

Myth 3: Artificial Intelligence Is Growing At A Lightning Pace

Another myth related to Artificial Intelligence is that it’s growing at a rapid pace and soon will blow out the role of humans in performing daily tasks. The concept of AI originated nearly 60 years ago, and it’s only in recent years that we have cracked reasonable accomplishments. So you see the growth process was very tedious and took a long time.

There is still a lot more to achieve especially in understanding the neuroscience and collaborating it effectively with AI. So, there is still a good load of time before you see a robot booking a flight for your business trip rather than a personal assistant.

Myth 4: Artificial Intelligence Will Make Humans Stupid

People strongly believe that AI will make humans more dependant on machines for their day-to-day tasks. The dependency will escalate to a level where people will forget to perform these mundane tasks on their own. This will only make humans less smart or rather foolish. However, this is completely baseless. It’s not the first time that humans have relied on machines to perform some of their daily tasks.

We use calculators for long calculations, word processors instead of pen and paper, automobiles instead of manual commute etc. These have only eased our lives and has not impacted the intellect of human beings at any level. By relying on machines for these low-value tasks, we save time and energy that can be devoted to other higher value and complex tasks.

Myth 5: Artificial Intelligence Is The Soul Cause Of Job Cuts

AI is often blamed to be the only cause for the slump in job openings as well as layoffs. People believe that companies nowadays rely more on machines rather than humans for performing tasks which previously required human efforts. Well, let’s understand one fact; ‘AI is not all the technology’.
Over the decades, technology as a whole has seen major advancements which have resulted in the development of machines which can perform human tasks more effectively and efficiently. Also, the job scenario in any nation or the entire world is dependant on global as well as the domestic economy. So to blame the poor AI as the sole culprit is a bit harsh.

To Conclude

In no way, I’m rescuing Artificial Intelligence or supporting it. The motive behind highlighting these points is to clear the air a bit so that people can take a sigh of relief. One can not deny the fact that the recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence are significant. But on the same hand, the foreseen future of AI has a lot of challenges and unanswered questions. A lot of tech pundits are skeptical about the effective use of Artificial Intelligence. A machine surpassing human beings at all levels is still only a good Hollywood movie plot.

Talk to our experts to know more about Artificial Intelligence and other technological advancements that can aid your business.

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Technology

Google Lens Is Revolutionising The Way A Camera Works

Decades ago Google reformed the way to search on the internet and since then it has only taken leaps in revolutionizing the entire internet experience. Google was the forerunner when it comes to search the internet using images. We still use the option of “Search Google for image ” on a regular basis to get information related to an image. But in a recent announcement, the company introduced Google Lens which is completely a new way of searching over the internet: Through your camera.

It was Snapchat who made a big impact on Augmented Reality by applying digital filters like a flower crown on people’s head. Now Google will make its own mark by providing digital information about real flowers. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai said, “With Google Lens, Google will understand what you’re looking at and help you take action”.

So How Google Lens Works?

Google Lens is actually image search in reverse. You click a picture using your phone camera and Google Lens gets you all the information related to it. The AI-powered computer vision is not a brand-new concept and has been around for quite some time now. But, Google Lens pushes it to another level. It is a more powerful successor of the company’s previously introduced features like Google Goggles and World lens. It brings Google’s use of Artificial Intelligence into the real world. The camera acts as a search box and fetches all the information for you. This is Google’s attempt to mold its search methodology according to the younger internet users who love to communicate through pictures rather than text.

So let’s say you take a picture of a restaurant. Google Lens can do a lot more than merely identifying it as a restaurant or giving you the name of the restaurant. It can actually pull up the menu, look for reservation options and check the availability of a table on a particular date. If you click a picture of a plant or flower. It will not just tell you the name of the flower. It will tell you its species, suitable environment for plantation, whether it requires direct or indirect sunlight etc. Wow!! Isn’t that exciting?

Google Lens

At first, it will work with Google Photos so that it can scan all the previously stored data. It’s also coming to Google Assistant where it will interact with new searches and images, and gradually it will come to all Google products. There is no official word on when it will be available with all Google products, but it’s expected to be done by the end of this year. Google has taken a different approach in creating its mark in the world of Augmented Reality. Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram use AR to make people laugh. They use funny filters to allow users to create funny videos, pictures etc. But Google Lens is an ambitious attempt by Google to use Augmented Reality for a utility purpose. As Google is applying its technology through widely used android phones, it has a huge set of an audience once it’s launched.

The future of AR is very bright and no doubt it’s the next big thing for the years to come. Television might just vanish with a pair of AR glasses. Everything you might want to know can be right in front of your eyes. Just look at it and get the information. The scope of AR is unimaginable. Technology giants have realized this fact and are all geared up to use AR in the best possible way. Google can be a leader of this revolution with everything that it knows about you, me and the world.

Stay updated with the latest technology and utilize it to boost your business. Speak to our technology experts and discuss your digital solutions requirement.