AI Zone Admin Forum Add your forum

NEWS: Chatbots.org survey on 3000 US and UK consumers shows it is time for chatbot integration in customer service!read more..

Software as a Service (SaaS) & Chatbots
 
 

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service

What are the primary consumer oriented SaaS chatbots?

Pandorabots

Verbotsonline

MyCyberTwin

Chatbot4u

Why is there no SaaS available for ChatScript?

Why is there no SaaS chabot available with an API into (or out of) the knowledgebase?

Do you agree that in order to move conversational AI to the next level (in terms of stimulating the industry) that more and better SaaS chatbots are needed?

 

 
  [ # 1 ]

I totally agree that the industry is lagging behind in technology that is really a no brainier. Companies have built their own little AI nitch applications, so a true set of standards do not really exist for accessing universual knowledge bases.

In looking at Chatscript, has a rich set of commands for parsing strings for logic, but I can’t see a way to hook external applications and to share data between them? I would suppose as more demand and interest develops, these kind of features will be addressed in the future? For now, I have to build my own engine and script interpreter to handle my calls to external data sources.

My interest in chat bots and AI applications is the in the challenge of over coming these shortcomings.

 

 
  [ # 2 ]

I’ve got a fair amount of experience in this area having developed and hosted tracktype.org for the past 7 years. I’m currently working on a solution for natural language processing. Still a long way to go but by way of example, a query like the following might yield a result like the following:

<a href="http://infurl.com/nlp?parse=was+to+have">http://infurl.com/nlp?parse=was+to+have</a> 
<Grammar>
 <
ambiguous>
  <
option>
   <
Past_Future_Third_Singular_HAVE>was to have</Past_Future_Third_Singular_HAVE>
  </
option>
  <
option>
   <
Past_Future_First_Singular_HAVE>was to have</Past_Future_First_Singular_HAVE>
  </
option>
 </
ambiguous>
</
Grammar

 

 

 
  [ # 3 ]

Maybe add PersonalityForge.com the list of SaaS chatbots.

A SaaS chatbot is basically a dialog system with a stock personality.  A SaaS chatbot may or may not include an avatar frontend.  That avatar may or may not include text-to-speech output.  And ideally, it would also include speech-to-text input, such as with many mobile apps.

I really don’t think it should be necessary for everyone to reinvent the wheel from scratch every time.  There are enough dialog systems, and enough stock personalities already.  Why agonize over an animated avatar interface, with lipsync and TTS/STT?  Shouldn’t these be simply MODULAR, mix and match components?

Beyond this, what I am desperately missing is the interactive API into the knowledgebase.  The SaaS chatbot should become a kind of (cloud-based) “middleware” in order to facilitate the integration and infinite customization of knowledge via all the APIs available on the Web.

 

 
  [ # 4 ]

If you want to do things outside of chatscript, you can, like AIML, call system(“command string”) and execute an arbitrary system command and get back a success or failure indicator.  If you need to pass back and forth more data than that,
you can read and write a set of facts to a file, using that as the medium of transfer.

 

 
  [ # 5 ]

I see… very interesting.

 

 
  [ # 6 ]
Marcus Endicott - Nov 21, 2011:

A SaaS chatbot is basically a dialog system with a stock personality.  A SaaS chatbot may or may not include an avatar frontend.  That avatar may or may not include text-to-speech output.  And ideally, it would also include speech-to-text input, such as with many mobile apps.

I really don’t think it should be necessary for everyone to reinvent the wheel from scratch every time.  There are enough dialog systems, and enough stock personalities already.  Why agonize over an animated avatar interface, with lipsync and TTS/STT?  Shouldn’t these be simply MODULAR, mix and match components?

Beyond this, what I am desperately missing is the interactive API into the knowledgebase.  The SaaS chatbot should become a kind of (cloud-based) “middleware” in order to facilitate the integration and infinite customization of knowledge via all the APIs available on the Web.

Hi Marcus

MyCyberTwin Professional users are able to simply enter website URLs which the engine will treat as an extended knowledge base. And obviously Enterprise users have access to more extensive API capabilities.

Regards

Shaun

 

 
  [ # 7 ]

> http://www.google.com/search?q=site:mycybertwin.com+api

Hi Shaun, I wasn’t aware of that, thanks.

Now, is the company name CyberTwin or MyCyberTwin?? ;^)

You have both HTTP API & Javascript API??

Is there one place I can find more details about the API?

The “CyberTwin Comparison Table” states the API is only available in the “Enterprise” version at $15,000 per month, with initial build at $150,000 to $300,000….

At this point we move away from “consumer oriented SaaS chatbots” into B2C (CRM) and B2B (such as Artificial Solutions “MIA”).

 

 
  [ # 8 ]

Why is there no SaaS chabot available with an API into (or out of) the knowledgebase?

Do you agree that in order to move conversational AI to the next level (in terms of stimulating the industry) that more and better SaaS chatbots are needed?

I’m also working towards that (closer then you might think).
Furthermore, you can already call to the outside world with my system (.net integration). Similarly, it’s a .net lib, so you can call into it as much as you like with the full lib (once available).
Just keep in mind that there is a serious restriction on what you can do with online based systems. You can’t call a ‘copyfile’ function for instance from inside a web-page. So calling to the outside world (to your local pc) from an online system will always be servilely limited in functionality.

I really don’t think it should be necessary for everyone to reinvent the wheel from scratch every time.  There are enough dialog systems, and enough stock personalities already.  Why agonize over an animated avatar interface, with lipsync and TTS/STT?  Shouldn’t these be simply MODULAR, mix and match components?

that depends. Why do all those car companies redesign their cars: to make them better + differentiate from others. If you want to have a system that distinguishes itself from the others, the avatar system is a very visual way of doing this.
What you are asking, is a bit like asking that all BMW’s, audi’s, mercs,... look and drive the same. Great if you want to contentiously switch between cars, not so great if you want to sell them.
Sure, it’s currently perfectly possible from a technical point of view, in the end, all the avatar needs to do is receive some text, put it into audio and lip sync to it, right? But what happens when you want to integrate the avatar completely into a neural net and not have it respond to text, but have the network do the audio output and also let it control every movement of the avatar. This way, the data stream is not text, but lots of small numbers directly controlling animation real time…. (something I am working towards).
Also, SAPI stinks. MS has all but abandoned the lib. There is no way you can get any help on this lib from MS (I tried in many different ways, all channels are mute, no response, dead). Just another example of the continuous flux.
Sure, it’ll most likely happen, just not yet, the whole thing is not yet mature enough and in full development.

Beyond this, what I am desperately missing is the interactive API into the knowledgebase.  The SaaS chatbot should become a kind of (cloud-based) “middleware” in order to facilitate the integration and infinite customization of knowledge via all the APIs available on the Web.

Perhaps it could go the other way round and instead of it going to the cloud, AI might simply take over your OS and use the internet as a resource.

 

 

 
  [ # 9 ]
Marcus Endicott - Nov 22, 2011:

> http://www.google.com/search?q=site:mycybertwin.com+api

Hi Shaun, I wasn’t aware of that, thanks.

Now, is the company name CyberTwin or MyCyberTwin?? ;^)

You have both HTTP API & Javascript API??

Is there one place I can find more details about the API?

The “CyberTwin Comparison Table” states the API is only available in the “Enterprise” version at $15,000 per month, with initial build at $150,000 to $300,000….

At this point we move away from “consumer oriented SaaS chatbots” into B2C (CRM) and B2B (such as Artificial Solutions “MIA”).

Our business name is MyCyberTwin smile

As for our API, this is only available to clients who have signed up for Enterprise accounts.

Cheers

Shaun

 

 
  [ # 10 ]

@Marcus: you might find more professional suppliers using SaaS using the Vendor Selector:
http://www.chatbots.org/vendor_selector .
I’ve found virtuoz.com & Artificial Solutions.

(time to update the company profile Shaun ? wink)

 

 
  login or register to react