USING PARAPHRASE IN ACCEPTING UTTERANCES IN AN AUTOMATED ASSISTANT

• US 20180061408A1
• Filed: 08/04/2017
• Published: 03/01/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 08/24/2016
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Semantic Machines, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Andreas, Jacob Daniel, Burkett, David Ernesto Heekin, Chen, Pengyu, Cohen, Jordan Rian, Durrett, Gregory Christopher, Gillick, Laurence Steven, Hall, David Leo Wright, Klein, Daniel, Pauls, Adam David, Roth, Daniel Lawrence, Rusak, Jesse Daniele Eskes, Virin, Yan, Wooters, Charles Clayton
• Application Number:
  US15/669,795
• Publication Number:
  US 20180061408A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/247 Thesauruses; Synonyms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/289 Phrasal analysis, e.g. finite state techniques or chunking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/063 Training
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/1822 Parsing for meaning understanding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/22 Procedures used during a speech recognition process, e.g. man-machine dialogue
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/30 Distributed recognition, e.g. in client-server systems, for mobile phones or network applications
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 2015/088 Word spotting

Abstract

An automated assistant automatically recognizes speech, decode paraphrases in the recognized speech, performs an action or task based on the decoder output, and provides a response to the user. The response may be text or audio, and may be translated to include paraphrasing. The automatically recognized speech may be processed to determine partitions in the speech, which may be in turn processed to identify paraphrases in the partitions. A decoder may process an input utterance text to identify paraphrases content to include in a segment or sentence. The decoder may paraphrase the input utterance to make the utterance, updated with one or more paraphrases, more easily parsed by a parser. A translator may process a generated response to make the response sound more natural. The translator may replace content of the generated response with paraphrase content based on the state of the conversation with the user, including salience data.

Claims

1. A system for providing an automated assistant, comprising:

an automatic speech recognition module stored in memory and executable by a processor that when executed receives speech data, recognizes words of a language in the speech, and outputs word data based on the recognized words; and

a paraphrase decoder stored in memory and executable by a processor that when executed identifies a first set of one or more words in the recognized words, selects a paraphrase associated with the first set of words, and generates a paraphrase decoder output including a paraphrase associated with the first set of words and the recognized words other than the first set of words, the paraphrase selected based on trigger phrases associated with a parser.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising an automated assistant that performs a task and generates a response based on the paraphrase decoder output.

3. The system of claim 1, further including a parser that provides the trigger phrases to the paraphrase decoder.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the trigger phrases include data used to train the parser

5. The system of claim 3, wherein the paraphrase decoder selects a paraphrase that allows the recognized words to be more easily parsed by the parser.

6. The system of claim 3, wherein the parser parses the recognized words based at least in part on state information.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a translator that creates training input sentences from the paraphrase decoder output.

8. A system for providing an automated assistant, comprising:

A generator module stored in memory and executable by a processor that when executed receives a speech structure form and renders a string of words based on the structure form; and

a paraphrase translator stored in memory and executable by a processor that when executed identifies a first set of words in the string of words, selects a paraphrase associated with the first set of words, and generates a paraphrase translator output including a paraphrase associated with the first set of words and the recognized words other than the first set of words, the paraphrase selected based at least in part on state information.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the paraphrase translator removes a chunk of the string of words based on the state information.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the paraphrase translator replaces a chunk of the string of words based on the state information.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the paraphrase translator generates a paraphrase to make the string of words sound more natural.