John Chang from Amazon Web Services presented information on Amazon Lex, a new conversational interface service. Lex allows developers to build conversational bots through the use of natural language understanding and text-to-speech. It integrates with other AWS services and can be deployed to chat platforms. Lex offers scalable and cost-effective conversational capabilities for applications, powered by the same deep learning technologies as Alexa.

1. © 2015, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
John Chang
Technology Evangelist
Amazon Web Services, HKT
March 2017
Amazon Lex
Conversational interfaces for your applications, powered
by the same deep learning technologies as Alexa

2. Amazon Lex
Why did we build Amazon Lex?
What is Amazon Lex?
How do I get started using Amazon Lex?
Q & A

3. Why Did We Build
Amazon Lex?

4. Advent of Conversational Interactions
1st Gen:
Punch Cards & Memory Registers
2nd Gen:
Pointers & Sliders
3nd Gen:
Conversational Interfaces

5. Conversational Access
On-Demand
Accessible
Efficient
Natural

6. Developer Challenges
Speech
Recognition Language
Understanding
Business Logic
Disparate
Systems
Authentication
Messaging
platforms
Scale Testing
Security
Availability
Mobile
Conversational interfaces need to combine a large number of
sophisticated algorithms and technologies

7. Amazon Lex: New service for building
conversational interfaces using voice and
text

8. Amazon Lex - Features
Text and Speech language understanding: Powered by the same technology as
Alexa
Enterprise SaaS Connectors: Connect to enterprise systems
Deployment to chat services
Designed for Builders: Efficient and intuitive tools to build
conversations; scales automatically
Versioning and alias support

9. Text and Speech Language Understanding
Speech
Recognition
Natural Language
Understanding
Powered by the same Deep Learning technology as Alexa

10. Deployment to Chat Services
Amazon Lex
Facebook
Messenger
Card Description
Button 1
Button 2
Button 3
Card
Description
Option 1
Option 2
Authentication
Rich FormattingOne-Click Deployment
Mobile

11. Designed for Builders
Efficient and intuitive tools to build conversations

12. Versioning and Alias Support
AliasVersioning
v1 v2 v3 latest
• Supported for Intents, Slots and Bots
• Enables multi-developer environment
• Rollback to previous versions
v1 Dev
v2 Stage
v3 Prod
• Deploy different aliases to different platforms
• Run different stacks for dev, stage and prod environments
• Target different user groups with different aliases

13. AWS Mobile Hub Integration
Authenticate users
Analyze user behavior
Store and share media
Synchronize data
More ….
Track retention
Conversational Bots
LexAWS Mobile SDKs
AWS Mobile Hub

14. Mobile Hub
SaaS Connector
Amazon API
Gateway
AWS
Lambda
Amazon API
Gateway
AWS
Lambda
Mobile Hub
Custom Connector
Business
Application
Firewall
Mobile App Amazon Lex
Enterprise SaaS Connectors with Mobile Hub
AWS
Lambda

15. Enterprise Connectors with Mobile Hub
Amazon Lex
Mobile App
Mobile Hub
SaaS Connector
Amazon API
Gateway
AWS
Lambda
1: Understand
user intent
Amazon API
Gateway
AWS
Lambda
3: Translate
REST response
into natural
language
Mobile Hub
Custom Connector
2: Invoke a SaaS
application or an existing
business application
Business
Application
Firewall
User Input

16. Amazon Lex – Use Cases
Informational Bots
Chatbots for everyday consumer requests
Application Bots
Build powerful interfaces to mobile applications
• News updates
• Weather information
• Game scores ….
• Book tickets
• Order food
• Manage bank accounts ….
Enterprise Productivity Bots
Streamline enterprise work activities and improve efficiencies
• Check sales numbers
• Marketing performance
• Inventory status ….
Internet of Things (IoT) Bots
Enable conversational interfaces for device interactions
• Wearables
• Appliances
• Auto ….

17. Amazon Lex - Benefits
High quality Text and Speech Language
Understanding
Built-in integration with the AWS platform
Seamlessly deploy and scale
Easy to use
Cost effective

18. Lex Bot Structure
Utterances
Spoken or typed phrases that invoke
your intent
BookHotel
Intents
An Intent performs an action in
response to natural language user
input
Slots
Slots are input data required to fulfill
the intent
Fulfillment
Fulfillment mechanism for your intent

19. Utterances
I’d like to book a hotel
I want to make my hotel reservations
I want to book a hotel in New York City
Can you help me book my hotel?

20. Slots
destination City New York City, Seattle, London, …
Slot Type Values
Check In Date Valid dates
Check Out Date Valid dates

21. Slot Elicitation
I’d like to book a hotel
What date do you check in?
New York City
Sure what city do you want to book?
Nov 30th Check In
11/30/2016
City
New York City

22. Fulfillment
AWS Lambda
Integration
Return to
Client
User input parsed to derive
intents and slot values.
Output returned to client for
further processing.
Intents and slots passed to
AWS Lambda function for
business logic
implementation.

23. “Book a Hotel”
Book Hotel
NYC
“Book a Hotel in
NYC”
Automatic Speech
Recognition
Hotel Booking
New York City
Natural Language
Understanding
Intent/Slot
Model
UtterancesHotel Booking
City New York City
Check In Nov 30th
Check Out Dec 2nd
“Your hotel is booked for
Nov 30th”
Polly
Confirmation: “Your hotel
is booked for Nov 30th”
a
in
“Can I go ahead
with the booking?

24. Save, Build and Publish
Save Build
Saving your bot
preserves the current
state on the server
Building your bot
creates versions
that you can test.
Publish
Publishing your bot will create a
version of your bot and provide
an alias to your clients
Test
Test your bot in a
chat window on the
Console

25. Monitoring
Track your bot
Request Latency
Missed Utterance Count

26. Customer Testimonials: Capital One
“A highly scalable solution, it also offers potential to speed time to market for a new generation of voice
and text interactions such as our recently launched Capital One skill for Alexa.”
“As a heavy user of AWS, Amazon Lex’s seamless integration with
other AWS services like AWS Lambda and AWS DynamoDB is really
appealing.”

27. Customer Testimonials: HubSpot
“Through Amazon's Lex, we're adding sophisticated natural language processing capabilities that helps
GrowthBot provide a more intuitive UI for our users. Amazon Lex lets us take advantage of advanced A.I.
and machine learning without having to code the algorithms ourselves.”
“HubSpot's GrowthBot is an all-in-one chatbot which helps marketers and sales
people be more productive by providing access to relevant data and services using a
conversational interface. With GrowthBot, marketers can get help creating content,
researching competitors, and monitoring their analytics.”

28. Amazon Lex Pricing
Text Speech
Price per 1000 requests $0.75 $4.00
Free Tier*
(requests per month) 10,000 5,000
*Available for the first year upon sign-up to new Amazon Lex customers

29. Amazon Lex - Technology
Amazon Lex
Automatic Speech
Recognition (ASR)
Natural Language
Understanding (NLU)
Same technology that powers Alexa
Cognito CloudTrail CloudWatch
AWS Services
Action
AWS Lambda
Authentication
& Visibility
Speech
API
Language
API
Fulfillment
End-Users
Developers
Console
SDK
Intents,
Slots,
Prompts,
Utterances
Input:
Speech
or Text
Multi-Platform Clients:
Mobile, IoT, Web,
Chat
API
Response:
Speech (via Polly TTS)
or Text

30. How Do I Get Started Using
Amazon Lex?

31. Register for the Preview @
aws.amazon.com/lex
Sign-Up & Whitelist
Build your first bot!

32. Q & A

33. Thank You!
http://aws.amazon.com/lex
Email: johnchan@amazon.com