Conversational interface determining lexical personality score for response generation with synonym replacement

• US 10,460,748 B2
• Filed: 10/04/2017
• Issued: 10/29/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/04/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Toronto-Dominion Bank
• Original Assignee: Toronto-Dominion Bank
• Inventors: Tseretopoulos, Dean C. N., McCarter, Robert Alexander, Walia, Sarabjit Singh, Lalka, Vipul Kishore, Moretti, Nadia, Dickie, Paige Elyse, Kuruvilla, Denny Devasia, Dunjic, Milos, D'Agostino, Dino Paul, Jagga, Arun Victor, Lee, John Jong-Suk, Jethwa, Rakesh Thomas
• Primary Examiner(s): Lerner, Martin
• Application Number:
  US15/725,095
• Publication Number:
  US 20190103127A1
• Time in Patent Office: 755 Days
• Field of Search: 704 9, 704 10, 704231, 704257, 704270, 704275
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/247 Thesauruses; Synonyms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/01 Social networking
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1815 Semantic context, e.g. disambiguation of the recognition hypotheses based on word meaning
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/225 Feedback of the input speech
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/63 for estimating an emotional state

Abstract

The present disclosure involves systems, software, and computer implemented methods for personalizing interactions within a conversational interface based on an input context. One example system performs operations including receiving a conversational input received via a conversational interface. The conversational input is analyzed to determine an intent and lexical personality score based on the input'"'"'s characteristics. A set of responsive content is determined and includes a set of initial tokens representing an initial response. A set of synonym tokens associated with at least some of the initial tokens are identified, and at least one synonym token associated with a similar lexical personality score to the input is determined. At least one of the initial tokens are replaced with the determined synonym token to generate a modified version of the set of response content. The modified version of the response is then transmitted to a device in response to the input.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a communications module;

at least one memory storing instructions and a repository of synonym tokens for association with one or more received inputs, each of the synonym tokens associated with a corresponding predefined lexical personality score; and

at least one hardware processor interoperably coupled with the at least one memory and the communications module, wherein the instructions instruct the at least one hardware processor to;

receive, via the communications module, a first signal including a conversational input received via interactions with a conversational interface;

analyze the received conversational input via a natural language processing engine to determine an intent of the received conversational input and a lexical personality score of the received conversational input, the determined intent and the determined lexical personality score based on characteristics included within the received conversational input, wherein the determined lexical personality score includes at least a first score representing a formality score and a second score representing a politeness score of the received conversational input, wherein the formality score and the politeness score represent respective measures determined based on the characteristics included within the received conversational input;

determine a set of response content responsive to the determined intent of the received conversational input, the determined set of response content including a set of initial tokens representing an initial response to the received conversational input, wherein the initial response to the received conversational input corresponds to a default lexical personality score;

identify a set of synonym tokens associated with at least some of the set of initial tokens, wherein each of the set of synonym tokens are associated with at least a corresponding formality score and a politeness score;

determine, from the identified set of synonym tokens, at least one synonym token associated with a lexical personality score similar to the determined formality score and politeness score of the received conversational input;

replace at least one token from the set of initial tokens included in the determined set of response content with the at least one determined synonym token corresponding to the determined formality score and politeness score of the received conversational input to generate a modified version of the set of response content; and

transmit, in response to the received first signal and via the communications module, a second signal including the modified version of the set of response content to a device associated with the received conversational input.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the received conversational input comprises a semantic query, wherein the intent of the conversational input is the semantic query.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input comprises a third score representing an identification of at least one regional phrase included within the received conversational input.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the received conversational input comprises textual input received via the conversational interface.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the received conversational input comprises audio input comprising a verbal statement received via the conversational interface.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input comprises a third score representing a determined accent of a speaker associated with the verbal statement.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein determining the at least one synonym token associated with the lexical personality score similar to the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input further includes determining at least one synonym token associated with the determined accent.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input comprises a third score representing a verbal tone of a speaker associated with the verbal statement.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein determining the at least one synonym token associated with the lexical personality score similar to the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input further includes determining at least one synonym token associated with the determined verbal tone of the speaker.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein each token in the set of initial tokens representing the initial response to the received conversational input comprises a particular phrase within a responsive sentence represented by the set of response content, and wherein each of the identified set of synonym tokens comprises a phrase having a similar meaning to at least one of the particular phrases in the responsive sentence.

11. A non-transitory, computer-readable medium storing computer-readable instructions executable by a computer and configured to:

receive, via a communications module, a first signal including a conversational input received via interactions with a conversational interface;

analyze the received conversational input via a natural language processing engine to determine an intent of the received conversational input and a lexical personality score of the received conversational input, the determined intent and the determined lexical personality score based on characteristics included within the received conversational input, wherein the determined lexical personality score includes at least a first score representing a formality score and a second score representing a politeness score of the received conversational input, wherein the formality score and the politeness score represent respective measures determined based on the characteristics included within the received conversational input;

determine a set of response content responsive to the determined intent of the received conversational input, the determined set of response content including a set of initial tokens representing an initial response to the received conversational input, wherein the initial response to the received conversational input corresponds to a default lexical personality score;

identify a set of synonym tokens associated with at least some of the set of initial tokens, wherein each of the set of synonym tokens are associated with at least a corresponding formality score and a politeness score;

determine, from the identified set of synonym tokens, at least one synonym token associated with a lexical personality score similar to the determined formality score and politeness score of the received conversational input

replace at least one token from the set of initial tokens included in the determined set of response content with the at least one determined synonym token corresponding to the determined formality score and politeness score of the received conversational input to generate a modified version of the set of response content; and

transmit, in response to the received first signal and via the communications module, a second signal including the modified version of the set of response content to a device associated with the received conversational input.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the received conversational input comprises textual input received via the conversational interface.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the received conversational input comprises audio input comprising a verbal statement received via the conversational interface.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input comprises a third score representing a determined accent of a speaker associated with the verbal statement, and wherein determining the at least one synonym token associated with the lexical personality score similar to the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input further includes determining at least one synonym token associated with the determined accent.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input comprises a third score representing a verbal tone of a speaker associated with the verbal statement, and wherein determining the at least one synonym token associated with the lexical personality score similar to the determined lexical personality score of the received conversational input further includes determining at least one synonym token associated with the determined verbal tone of the speaker.

16. A computerized method performed by one or more processors, the method comprising:

receiving, via a communications module, a first signal including a conversational input received via interactions with a conversational interface;

analyzing the received conversational input via a natural language processing engine to determine an intent of the received conversational input and a lexical personality score of the received conversational input, the determined intent and the determined lexical personality score based on characteristics included within the received conversational input, wherein the determined lexical personality score includes at least a first score representing a formality score and a second score representing a politeness score of the received conversational input, wherein the formality score and the politeness score represent respective measures determined based on the characteristics included within the received conversational input;

determining a set of response content responsive to the determined intent of the received conversational input, the determined set of response content including a set of initial tokens representing an initial response to the received conversational input, wherein the initial response to the received conversational input corresponds to a default lexical personality score;

identifying a set of synonym tokens associated with at least some of the set of initial tokens, wherein each of the set of synonym tokens are associated with at least a corresponding formality score and a politeness score;

determining, from the identified set of synonym tokens, at least one synonym token associated with a lexical personality score similar to the determined formality score and politeness score of the received conversational input;

replacing at least one token from the set of initial tokens included in the determined set of response content with the at least one determined synonym token corresponding to the determined formality score and politeness score of the received conversational input to generate a modified version of the set of response content; and

transmitting, in response to the received first signal and via the communications module, a second signal including the modified version of the set of response content to a device associated with the received conversational input.