Using Intents to Analyze and Personalize a User's Dialog Experience with a Virtual Personal Assistant
First Claim
1. A method for personalizing a user experience with a computerized virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) application, the VPA application enabling user-directed natural language dialog between a user and the VPA application, the method comprising, with a computing system;
maintaining a chain of intents, the chain of intents comprising a plurality of temporally-spaced intents, each of the intents representing a structured interpretation of natural language dialog expressed by a user of the VPA application during a conversational natural language dialog session involving the user and the VPA application;
recognizing a pattern of intents in the chain of intents;
deriving an inference from the pattern of intents, the inference comprising a conclusion about the user or about the dialog session between the user and the VPA application that is not otherwise available to the VPA application; and
applying the inference to a subsequent conversational natural language dialog session involving the VPA application and the user.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
A virtual personal assistant (VPA) application analyzes intents to, among other things, enhance or personalize a user'"'"'s dialog experience with the VPA application. A set of intents, or multiple sets of intents, are maintained over the course of one or more user-specific dialog sessions with the VPA. Inferences may be derived from the set or sets of intents and incorporated into a current or future dialog session between the VPA and a user of the VPA application. In some embodiments, the inferences are only made available through the systemic understanding of natural language discourse by the VPA.
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Citations
26 Claims
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1. A method for personalizing a user experience with a computerized virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) application, the VPA application enabling user-directed natural language dialog between a user and the VPA application, the method comprising, with a computing system;maintaining a chain of intents, the chain of intents comprising a plurality of temporally-spaced intents, each of the intents representing a structured interpretation of natural language dialog expressed by a user of the VPA application during a conversational natural language dialog session involving the user and the VPA application; recognizing a pattern of intents in the chain of intents; deriving an inference from the pattern of intents, the inference comprising a conclusion about the user or about the dialog session between the user and the VPA application that is not otherwise available to the VPA application; and applying the inference to a subsequent conversational natural language dialog session involving the VPA application and the user. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
- VPA”
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11. A virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) computer application embodied in one or more machine-accessible storage media, the VPA computer application comprising;a user interface through which a user-directed conversational natural language dialog session may be conducted between a computing device and a user; and a VPA engine to conduct the dialog session and initiate the providing of a service or information to the user in response to conversational natural language dialog supplied by the user during the dialog session, the VPA engine configured to; maintain a dialog context, the dialog context comprising a plurality of temporally-spaced intents, each of the intents representing at least a partial interpretation of natural language dialog expressed by the user during the dialog session; determine a current intent, the current intent representing a partial interpretation of natural language dialog expressed by the user subsequent to the natural language dialog represented by the intents in the dialog context; identify an intent in the dialog context having a data relationship with the current intent; combine the identified intent with the current intent in accordance with the data relationship; and generate system output based on the combined intent. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
- VPA”
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21. An intent analyzer to analyze a user experience with a computerized virtual personal assistant (“
- VPA”
) application, the VPA application enabling user-directed natural language dialog between a user and the VPA application, the intent analyzer embodied in one or more machine accessible storage media and configured to;maintain a set of intents, one or more of the intents representing a structured interpretation of natural language dialog expressed by a user of the VPA application during a conversational natural language dialog session involving the user and the VPA application; identify a pattern of intents in the set of intents; derive an inference about the dialog session from the pattern of intents; and apply the inference to another conversational natural language dialog session involving the VPA application. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26)
- VPA”
Specification