In the last article about bots I covered creating a basic bot using Microsoft’s botframework, setting up Azure, deploying the bot into Azure, and configuring it to work within Skype. In this article we’re going to investigate the various response types available to us in the botframework to develop a more rich conversational experience. Markdown […]
At //Build 2016 Microsoft unleashed something known as the Bot Framework; a set of three products to help you build conversational bots and connect them with services, like Slack, Skype, and even Email and SMS. The Bot Framework has a number of components including the Developer Portal, Bot Builder, and the Bot Directory: Developer Portal […]
In a recent article I introduced Microsoft Cognitive Services’ Speaker Verification service, using a recording of a person repeating one of a set of key phrases to verify that user by their voiceprint. The second main feature of the Speaker Recognition API is Speaker Identification, which can compare a piece of audio to a selection […]
Microsoft have been consistently ramping up their AI offerings over the past couple of years under the grouping of “Cognitive Services”. These include some incredible offerings as services for things that would have required a degree in Maths and a deep understanding of Python and R to achieve, such as image recognition, video analysis, speech […]
On the 16th January I had the pleasure of hosting another London BotFramework meetup at the newly constructed event space in the Just Eat offices. They’ve joined three floors with a staircase, so attendees can have beers and pizza upstairs while the presenters sweat with the AV equipment downstairs! There was a great turnout for […]
On Wednesday 22nd November 2017 I had the pleasure of running the third London Bot Framework meetup at the lovely Just Eat office in central London. The offices have been recently upgraded and the new meetup space has a huge 9 screen display a multiple mic speaker system, including a fantastic CatchBox throwable mic for […]
Whatever your social media tool of choice is these days, it’s almost guaranteed to be filled with images and their associated hashtags #sorrynotsorry #lovelife #sunnyday Sometimes coming up with those tags is more work than perfectly framing your latest #flatlay shot. In the age of amazing image recognition tech, it must be possible to create […]
Now that we are making more conversational interfaces thanks to technology like botframework, interaction with the user is no longer limited to a tap on a link or a button. Having written language as the primary form of interaction with our systems gives significant difficulties in terms of intent understanding, but also gives great opportunities […]
As part of Microsoft’s recent Tech Days Online, I was very pleased to be able to record a couple of short videos about botframework, LUIS, the QnA Maker, and how I have been working with JustEat to use these technologies in their Customer Help chatbot solution. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the live TechDays […]
There has been some significant progress in “deep learning”, AI, and image recognition over the past couple of years; Google, Microsoft, and Amazon each have their own service offering. But what is the service like? How useful is it? Everyone’s having a go at making a chatbot this year (and if you’re not, perhaps you […]