New open-source NLP toolkit ICECAPS emphasizes conversational modeling

How we act, including how we speak, is more often than not determined by the situation we find ourselves in. We tailor dialogue to appropriately fit the scenario. If trained conversational agents are to continue evolving into dependable resources people can turn to for assistance, they'll need to be trained to do the same. Today, we're excited to make available the Intelligent Conversation Engine: Code and Pre-trained Systems, or Microsoft Icecaps, a new open-source toolkit that not only allows researchers and developers to imbue their chatbots with different personas, but also to incorporate other natural language processing features that emphasize conversation modeling. Icecaps provides an array of capabilities from recent conversation modeling literature.