Exploring Microsoft Conversational AI: An In-depth Overview

Ever wondered how Siri or Alexa talks back just like your friends, and at times, you feel that an actual human is behind it? Well, that is the magic of AI that makes a bot chat or converse like a human. The back mechanism depends on Natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning through which the machine or computer can think, feel, and assess like a human.

The bot will understand the tone, context, and dialect and generate sentences and information accordingly. Conversational AI bots are getting popular because of their ease of use and for more accessibility and better communication. One of those fantastic conversational AI platforms is Microsoft.

Due to its deep human understanding and advanced machine learning, the Microsoft conversational AI platform performs better than others. It is brilliant in picking up the correct dialect and language, plus the search results are 99 percent relevant and to the point.

What makes Microsoft conversational AI beat all is how it is devised and the adaptivity of the bot to enhance its human learning making the interaction more accurate and relevant.

1What is Microsoft Conversational AI

Microsoft Conversational AI is the application of AI and natural language computing through which voice or chatbots pick and understand languages and tones and generate responses humanly.

As a whole, conversational AI is the technology to make a machine's innate human behavior and thinking to converse with a human-like another person would.

In essence, it is a software package or bot development plaform that allows coders and AI creators to develop voice and chatbots.

2Components of Microsoft Conversational AI

image source: https://dev.botframework.com/

Microsoft conversational AI comprises the following components that add up to develop a high-performing voice and chatbot that act and respond like a natural person:

1Bot Framework Composer

This open-source application can be used over the cloud or on any kind of OS, like Windows, Linux, iOS, etc., to create and test chat and voice bots. The bot framework composer includes the framework, tools, and other bot configurations to integrate into the bots and make them intelligent.

Developers can quickly test and debug their bots. Also, with all the bot components available, they can create deep understanding and link the bot to language understanding and behavioral characteristics, making them more efficient.

2Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS)

The language understanding intelligence service enables the bots to pick the tone, dialect, and various languages and respond similarly. This module enhances the cognitive ability of your bots by linking their location, organization, and other factors in creating relevant and natural text responses.

LUIS is equipped with a text and speech analyzer, which has predefined utterance cases, and a key phrase analyzer that helps the bot better understand the context. Developers can also create customized programs and responses too as per their requirements.

3QnA Maker

QnA maker tool or application helps the developers to enable the bots to respond to users' questions in a human way. This is a web-based application in which developers can create queries and their responses to feed into the bot and enable the bots to pick up the patterns and train bots to converse with users and ask questions like real people.

The application is super easy to use, and anyone can operate it to integrate LUIS and bot framework without having language expertise and advanced technical knowledge.

4Azure Bot Service

Azure bot service is a package or software platform that includes all the bot creation and enhancing tools. The Azure service is available to make your bots intelligent by integrating language interpretation and understanding cognitive abilities in the bots.

Azure bot service manages your bots over various channels and connects them to databases to access information and let the machine learn with time.

The package includes all the bot development framework, its integration with QnA maker, other development models, and publishing and interaction with users through web channels.

It is standard for conversation AI software agents and is used by many platforms to create and manage their chat and voice bots.

3Is Microsoft Conversational AI free?

There is no price for Microsoft conversational AI for initial chat messaging and open-source tools. Still, you must pay some charges to the company for the whole development framework packages, such as Azure bot service, QnA maker, and speech integration tool. The costs vary as per need and use, and you can check with the Microsoft team to buy your required tools.

4Use cases in different industries of Microsoft Conversational AI

Conversational AI has evolved interaction in various industries. Don't you feel special and satisfied when a company texts you or sends a personalized email? You think they care and listen to you, making you switch to do business with such a service provider for a long time; this, in reality, is a conversational bot that collects your data, analyzes your complaints or feedback, and then generates the relevant response. This happens in every company or app, such as car rental services, food delivery apps, mobile network customer care, etc. Some of the implementations of Microsoft conversational AI include:

• Customer care department of business. Order placements, delivery details, personalized suggestions, account updates, etc.
• In the healthcare sector, these bots can help collect symptoms, previous history, or patients, direct them to the correct department, schedule appointments, and keep records.
• For big organizations, these bots can help keep employee records, payment details, feedback, and work-related problems, share company news and policies, etc.
• In the educational sector, chat and voice bots can help recommend student-relevant programs, update them on results and open positions, keep their performance records, and take reviews or feedback from faculty.

5Benefits of Using Microsoft Conversational AI

Using Microsoft conversational AI over other conversational AI packages has various benefits that are as follows:

Ability to integrate with other Microsoft services

The Microsoft conversational AI tools can easily integrate with other Microsoft tools and service packages, which makes it easier for the developer to publish and manage the bots with their existing software packages.

Layouts are easy to use

Microsoft bot framework has a straightforward graphical interface and easy layout choice, enabling even amateur developers to create bots without difficulty.

Can connect across different channels

The Microsoft conversational AI is an open source and cloud-based tool that can be used through any channel or OS. You don't require any particular OS or platform to create bots through Microsoft conversational AI.

Cost-effective and deep learning

Microsoft conversational AI is very cost friendly, and the package doesn't charge much compared to its performance and deep-rooted learning. The language tools and bot framework are advanced and consist of pre-built modules and functions to implement a bot quickly.

Also, Microsoft conversational AI is easily scalable, and you can scale it up as you require with your business with no issues or extra additional costs.

6How to implement a conversational AI platform

• First, create a GUI or conversational deck for interaction.
• Now specify the need for the chat or voice bot you are creating. Which organization is it for, what is the purpose, what information will it provide, etc?
• Then code the backend of this window. Integrate language interpreter, feed questions and responses to the bot, and connect it with the QnA maker to make it learn through experience.
• Create a database for the expected question or connect the bot to any online data source to access knowledge for generating responses.
• Test and debug the bot before publishing it on the app or site.
• Check for the supported channels it can work on.
• Decide the scale of deployment and its infrastructure.

7What is the Microsoft bot controversy?

The bot controversy appeared when some renowned personalities tried to converse with the Microsoft conversational AI-powered bot. That time the bot started to say mean and hateful things to the person, and at that moment, it was thought that it was not the bot speaking but an actual human was behind it as to how a bot can have such feelings or give such rude personal comments to a person. This was one of many cases. The chatbot has taken different personas and acted weirdly with many users in conversation with it.

Thus, in the hope of making its AI reach higher limits, Microsoft has made it go out of control and act out of context and say absurd things. So the developers learned the lesson and tried to amend the mistake by carefully building the bots and making them intelligent in proportion so they could behave intelligently and not abnormally.