This document discusses conversational interfaces and Amazon's services that can help enable them. It summarizes that conversational interfaces are the third generation of user interfaces after punch cards/memory registers and pointers/sliders. It then discusses challenges in building conversational interfaces and outlines Amazon services like Transcribe, Translate, Polly, Comprehend, and Lex that provide capabilities for speech recognition, language translation and understanding, text-to-speech, and building conversational bots and interfaces. Use cases for these services include information bots, customer service, digital assistants, and more.

1. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Francesco Rinaudo
Snr. Manager Solutions Architecture, AWS
Enhance customer experience with
conversational interfaces

2. Source: Star Trek IV (20th Century Fox), 1986

3. 1st gen:
Punch cards & memory registers
2nd gen:
Pointers & sliders
3rd gen:
Conversational interfaces
Advent of conversational interactions

4. Developer challenges
Conversational interfaces need to combine a large number of
sophisticated algorithms and technologies
Speech
recognition Language
understanding
Business logic
Disparate
systems
Authentication
Messaging
platforms
Scale Testing
Security
Availability
Mobile

5. Powerful language capabilities
Amazon Transcribe
Automatic conversion of speech into accurate, grammatically correct
text
Amazon Translate Natural and fluent language translation
Amazon Polly Turn text into lifelike speech using deep learning
Amazon Comprehend Discover insights and relationships in text
Amazon Lex Conversational interfaces for text-based and voice-based applications

6. Common Language Use Cases
Information Bots
Education
Accessibility
Knowledge Management
Voice of Customer
Applications
Customer Service/
Call Centers
Enterprise
Digital Assistant
Semantic Search
Captioning Workflows
LocalizationPersonalization

7. Amazon Comprehend
Discover insights and relationships in text using deep learning
Entities
Key Phrases
Language
Sentiment
Amazon
Comprehend
Providing locally relevant personalized travel experiences is the goal at Hotels.com. Hence helping our customers find the right
experience is crucial. Amazon Comprehend helps us analyze the key sentiments, objects, and geos in our 30 million plus reviews &
testimonies. Now we are able to discover new insights into the unique experiences available at each property, so our customers can
make the best decision possible for their travel.”
– Matt Fryer, VP and Chief Data Science Officer of Hotels.com and Expedia Affiliate Network

8. Amazon Comprehend
Storm
World Series
Stock market
Washington
Library of news
articles
Amazon
Comprehend
Discover insights and relationships in text using deep learning

9. Amazon Transcribe
Automatic conversion of speech into accurate, grammatically
correct text
Support for
telephony
audio
Timestamp
generation
Intelligent
punctuation and
formatting
Recognize
multiple
speakers
Custom
vocabulary
Multiple
languages

10. Amazon Translate
Natural and fluent language translation
Real-time
translation
Batch analysis Automatic language
recognition
Low cost

11. Amazon Polly
Turn text into lifelike speech using deep learning
Wide selection of
voices and languages
Synchronize
speech
Fine-grained
control
Unlimited replay
“I can't think of many use cases where accurate pronunciation is more important than when you're learning a new language. We have
found that the Amazon Polly voices are not just high in quality, but are as good as natural human speech for teaching a language.”
Severin Hacker, CTO, Duolingo

12. Amazon Lex
Speech
recognition
Natural language
understanding
Powered by the same deep learning technology as Alexa
Building conversational interfaces into any application using
voice and text

13. Amazon Lex – Features
Text and speech language understanding: powered by the same
technology as Amazon Alexa
Deployment to chat services
(Web/Mobile Apps, Facebook, Kik, Slack, Twilio SMS)
Enterprise connectors: Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics,
Marketo, Zendesk, Quickbooks, and Hubspot
Designed for builders: efficient and intuitive tools to build
conversations; scales automatically
Versioning and alias support
@

14. Amazon Lex
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

15. “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”
Amazon Polly
Confirmation: “Your hotel
is booked for Nov 30th”
“Can I go ahead
with the booking?
a
in

16. Demo

17. Alexa For Business
“Alexa, start the meeting.”
“Alexa, dial 555-8000.”
“Alexa, lower the blinds.”
“Alexa, ask Salesforce which
big deals closed today.”
Your intelligent assistant for work
Provision and manage
shared devices
Configure
conference rooms
Enroll users
and assign skills
Build custom
skills

18. Thank you!