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| Source: Microsoft news feature. Microsoft plans to make AI available to all. |
Microsoft has shared a status update of the progress it is making towards its vision of democratising artificial intelligence (AI) for everyone, with a focus on conversational computing.
In October, the company announced that it had published a paper about speech recognition technology that
makes the same or fewer errors than professional human transcriptionists. The
researchers reported a word error rate (WER) of 5.9%, which is about equal to that of people who were
asked to transcribe the same conversation. The WER is the lowest-ever
recorded against the industry standard Switchboard speech recognition
task, Microsoft notes.
A Cortana Devices software development kit (SDK) will allow original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) to create a new generation of smart, personal devices. Cortana will be seen in a Harman Kardon premium home speaker in February 2017, for instance.
AI can be harnessed through personal digital assistants like Microsoft's voice-activated Cortana. Microsoft has introduced the Cortana Skills Kit to help developers reach the growing audience of 145 million Cortana users, helping users get things done while driving discovery and engagement across platforms: Windows, Android, iOS, Xbox and new Cortana-powered devices.
Microsoft’s long-term strategy is that agents like Cortana will not only have IQ but also have EQ, and chatbots are part of this evolution. Microsoft officially introduced social chatbot Zo, which follows Xiaoice in China in 2014 and Rinna in Japan in 2015 (as well as Tay on Twitter, earlier in 2016). Zo learns from human interactions to respond emotionally and intelligently, providing a unique viewpoint, along with manners and emotional expressions. She also has strong checks and balances in place to protect her from exploitation.
Zo already has more than 115,000 users and is ready to chat with users on Kik today. Microsoft plans to bring her to other social and conversational
channels such as Skype and Facebook Messenger in future.
Microsoft further announced that 67,000 developers are using Microsoft Bot Framework, and that new tools are now available to make it easier to create bots including the new Microsoft Cognitive Service, QnA Maker. QnA Maker is a free REST API- and web-based service that trains AI to respond to users’ questions in a more natural, conversational way. Another such tool is the open source Bing Location Control for Bot Framework, which allows bot developers to easily and reliably get the user’s desired location within a conversation.
Microsoft has also updated the Language Understanding Intelligence Service (LUIS). LUIS provides shortcuts to making human-computer interactions more effective. There are many ways to tell a voice-activated system to turn on one of several lights in a room for example, and LUIS helps computers to understand what a person wants.
A new feature, Microsoft Translator, currently in preview, allows users to carry out real-time, multilingual conversations. The technology can simultaneously translate between groups speaking multiple
languages in-person, in real-time.
Microsoft additionally announced Calendar.help, a service that blends AI and human-in-the-loop that basically gets Cortana to take over the burden of scheduling meetings. The technology combines efforts from Microsoft Research, Outlook, Cortana and Genee—a scheduling AI startup that Microsoft acquired in August 2016.
As part of the same announcement Microsoft also showcased new calling capabilities for Skype bots and more media support for them.
Interested?
Download the Microsoft Translator app, which is available for personal and business use
Sign up for the preview waitlist for Calendar.help
Chat with Zo on Kik or request an invite to chat with Zo on Messenger, when it is available
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