Amazon intros new deep learning models to make Alexa more conversational ZDNet

Amazon on Wednesday announced Alexa Conversations, a deep learning-based approach for developers to create natural voice experiences on Alexa. The toolset, currently in preview, lets developers build natural skill dialogs with fewer lines of code and less training data, Amazon said. To use Conversations, developers provide API access to their skills' functionality, a sample of dialogs annotated with the prompts that Alexa will say to say to the customer, and the actions they expect the customer to take. Alexa Conversations' AI finishes the job, using the input data to generate dialog flows and variations. "It's way easier to build a complex voice experience with Alexa Conversations due to its underlying deep-learning-based dialog modeling,"said Rohit Prasad, Alexa vice president and head scientist, at Amazon's re:MARS conference in Las Vegas Wednesday.