ENHANCING USER QUERIES USING IMPLICIT INDICATORS

• US 20180068031A1
• Filed: 08/15/2017
• Published: 03/08/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 08/16/2016
• Status: Active Application

• Current Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Original Assignee: eBay Inc.
• Inventors: Hewavitharana, Sanjika, Kale, Ajinkya Gorakhnath
• Application Number:
  US15/677,817
• Publication Number:
  US 20180068031A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3438 monitoring of user actions tracking the activity of the user H04L67/535
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3329 Natural language query formulation or dialogue systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90328 using search space presentation or visualization, e.g. category or range presentation and selection
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/10 Text processing natural language analysis G06F40/20; semantic analysis G06F40/30; processing or translation of natural language G06F40/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/295 Named entity recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/58 Use of machine translation, e.g. for multi-lingual retrieval, for server-side translation for client devices or for real-time translation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/30156 Special purpose encoding of instructions, e.g. Gray coding
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 20/00 Machine learning
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 3/006 based on simulated virtual individual or collective life forms, e.g. social simulations or particle swarm optimisation [PSO]
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 3/08 Learning methods
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/022 Knowledge engineering; Knowledge acquisition
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 7/01 Probabilistic graphical models, e.g. probabilistic networks
• 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

Abstract

In various example embodiments, a system and method for balancing implicit and explicit indicators is presented. In one example, a method includes a user'"'"'s utterance that includes a user query, extracting user intent parameters from the user query, constructing a structured query in a machine readable format using user intent parameters, determining whether the user query includes an implicit indicator, determining a confidence rating for the implicit indicator, updating the structured query to include the implicit indicator in response to the confidence rating for the implicit indicator being above a threshold value, and submitting the structured query to a database of items.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a machine-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a processor, causes the system to perform operations comprising;

detecting, using a microphone, a user'"'"'s utterance that includes a user query for an item;

extracting user intent parameters from the user query using natural language processing;

constructing a structured query in a machine readable format using the user intent parameters;

determining whether the user query includes an implicit indicator, the implicit indicator implying a property of the item without explicitly declaring the property of the item;

determining a confidence rating for the implicit indicator in response to the user query including the implicit indicator;

updating the structured query to include the implicit indicator in response to the confidence rating for the implicit indicator being above a threshold value; and

submitting the structured query to a database of items.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise requesting, in response to the user query including the implicit indicator, that the user clarify the implicit indicator.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the requesting that the user clarify the implicit indicator is also in response to the confidence rating for the implicit indicator being below the threshold value.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise updating a profile parameter for the user in response to the user clarifying the implicit indicator, the profile parameter comprising the implicit indicator.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein extracting user intent parameters is done by gathering semantic information from remote sources and organizing the semantic information into a graph structure.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise receiving an image of the item, extracting parameters from the image using computer vision, and including the extracted parameters into the structured query for the item.

7. A method comprising:

detecting, using a microphone, a user'"'"'s utterance that includes a user query for an item;

extracting user intent parameters from the user query using natural language processing;

constructing a structured query in a machine readable format using user intent parameters;

determining whether the user query includes an implicit indicator, the implicit indicator implying a property of the item without explicitly declaring the property of the item;

determining a confidence rating for the implicit indicator in response to the user query including an implicit indicator;

updating the structured query to include the implicit indicator in response to the confidence rating for the implicit indicator being above a threshold value; and

submitting the structured query to a database of items.

8. The method of claim 7, further comprising requesting, in response to the user query including an implicit indicator, that the user clarify the implicit indicator.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein requesting that the user clarify the implicit indicator is also in response to the confidence rating for the implicit indicator being below the threshold value.

10. The method of claim 7, further comprising updating a profile parameter for the user in response to the user clarifying the implicit indicator, the profile parameter comprising the implicit indicator.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein extracting user intent parameters comprises gathering semantic information from remote sources and organizing the semantic information into a graph structure.

12. The method of claim 7, further comprising receiving an image of the item, extracting parameters from the image using computer vision, and including the extracted parameters into the structured query.

13. The method of claim 7, wherein the implicit indicator conflicts with an explicit indicator included in the user'"'"'s query for the item, the method further comprising transmitting the explicit indicator and the implicit indicator to a dialog manager and receive clarification of the implicit indicator from the dialog manager.

14. A machine-readable hardware medium having instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform:

detecting, using a microphone, a user'"'"'s utterance that includes a user query;

extracting user intent parameters from the user query using natural language processing;

constructing a structured query in a machine readable format using user intent parameters;

determining whether the user query includes an implicit indicator, the implicit indicator implying a property of the item without explicitly declaring the property of the item;

determining a confidence rating for the implicit indicator in response to the user query including an implicit indicator;

updating the structured query to include the implicit indicator in response to the confidence rating for the implicit indicator being above a threshold value; and

submitting the structured query to a database of items.

15. The machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the instructions further comprise requesting, in response to the user query including an implicit indicator, that the user clarify the implicit indicator.

16. The machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein requesting that the user clarify the implicit indicator is also in response to the confidence rating for the implicit indicator being below the threshold value.

15-1. The machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the instructions further comprise updating a profile parameter for the user in response to the user clarifying the implicit indicator, the profile parameter comprising the implicit indicator.

18. The machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein extracting user intent parameters comprises gathering semantic information from remote sources and organizing the semantic information into a graph structure.

19. The machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the instructions further comprise receiving an image of the item, extracting parameters from the image using computer vision, and including the extracted parameters into the structured query.

20. The machine readable medium of claim 14, wherein the implicit indicator conflicts with an explicit indicator included in the user'"'"'s query for the item, the instructions further cause the processor to transmit the explicit indicator and the implicit indicator to a dialog manager and receive clarification of the implicit indicator from the dialog manager.