System and method for generating natural language phrases from user utterances in dialog systems
First Claim
1. A method of generating responses in a dialog system in response to user input in a current conversation session, comprising:
- collecting original user phrase data comprising the user input from one or more past conversation sessions between a first user only and the dialog system to form phrase models in a training phase using the first user'"'"'s own phrases for use by a response generator in response to a query by the first user;
using the phrase models at a semantic level to use wordings in the response that utilize the first user'"'"'s own phrases and to identify constraint-carrying phrases from the first user'"'"'s utterances;
determining constraints expressed in each user utterance in the past conversation sessions using one or more constraint identifiers;
forming a pool of user examples instructing the system on how to lexicalize the constraints to form lexicalized constraints;
extracting one or more extracted constraints, each comprising a constraint-value pair, from the user input;
generalizing the extracted constraints into phrase patterns using the lexicalized constraints to produce general phrase patterns;
constructing a response database consisting of the original phrase data and the general phrase patterns;
transmitting a set of filled constraints to the response generator component from the user input; and
selecting at least one phrase from the response database that optimally matches the set of filled constraints to form a response utilizing the first user'"'"'s own phrases.
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Abstract
Embodiments of a dialog system that employs a corpus-based approach to generate responses based on a given number of semantic constraint-value pairs are described. The system makes full use of the data from the user input to produce dialog system responses in combination with a template generator. The system primarily utilizes constraint values in order to realize efficiencies based on the more frequent tasks performed in real dialog systems although rhetorical or discourse aspects of the dialog could also be included in a similar way, that is, labeling the data with such information and performing a training process. The benefits of this system include higher quality user-aligned responses, broader coverage, faster response time, and shorter development cycles.
16 Citations
22 Claims
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1. A method of generating responses in a dialog system in response to user input in a current conversation session, comprising:
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collecting original user phrase data comprising the user input from one or more past conversation sessions between a first user only and the dialog system to form phrase models in a training phase using the first user'"'"'s own phrases for use by a response generator in response to a query by the first user; using the phrase models at a semantic level to use wordings in the response that utilize the first user'"'"'s own phrases and to identify constraint-carrying phrases from the first user'"'"'s utterances; determining constraints expressed in each user utterance in the past conversation sessions using one or more constraint identifiers; forming a pool of user examples instructing the system on how to lexicalize the constraints to form lexicalized constraints; extracting one or more extracted constraints, each comprising a constraint-value pair, from the user input; generalizing the extracted constraints into phrase patterns using the lexicalized constraints to produce general phrase patterns; constructing a response database consisting of the original phrase data and the general phrase patterns; transmitting a set of filled constraints to the response generator component from the user input; and selecting at least one phrase from the response database that optimally matches the set of filled constraints to form a response utilizing the first user'"'"'s own phrases. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A method of generating phrases in a dialog system in response to user input during one or more turns of a present conversation session between a first user and the dialog system, comprising:
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collecting, during a training phase, a corpus of user data from one or more past conversation sessions between the first user only and the dialog system to form phrase models using the first user'"'"'s own phrases for use by a response generator component in response to a query by the first user; determining constraints expressed in each user utterance in the past conversation sessions using one or more constraint identifiers; forming a pool of user examples instructing the system on how to lexicalize the constraints to form lexicalized constraints; using the phrase models at a semantic level to use wordings in the response that utilize the first user'"'"'s own phrases; constructing phrase models based on the corpus of first user data, wherein the phrase models comprise constraint sets consisting of constraint-value pairs based on the lexicalized constraints; selecting an optimal constraint set from the corpus of user data in response to a constraint within the user input; and generating a sentence for output from the response generator component incorporating the optimal constraint set to form a response utilizing the first user'"'"'s own phrases. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22)
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Specification