Google has recently acquired a natural language user interface startup Api.ai with the aim of becoming the leader in the field of artificial intelligence interface. API.AI is a machine learning startup company that provides tools to make conversational bots. Api.ai software is used in apps, wearables, chatbots, home automation kits, smart cars and smart TVs. Chatbots using Api.ai technology are on Messenger, Facebook, Slack, Twitter, Skype, Microsoft Cortana and Telegram. Over sixty thousand developers worldwide are currently using Api.ai to deliver conversational interfaces. Not only developer’s tools but api.ai also offers a conversational assistance app to more than 20 million users worldwide. Api.ai makes the technology understand and speak human language and help developers build highly intelligent conversational interfaces for their products and services. Though Google has not yet disclosed its plans for integrating with the startup technology. Google already has some tools for speech recognition and natural language understanding. It is now ready to unveil two new tools, one is Google Assistant that will be available through text messaging interface and another is the Google home smart speaker.
Api.ai has a great record of helping developers build, design and continuously improve their conversational interfaces. Â Api.ai was launched in 2014 and is known well for providing speech recognition, text recognition, and natural language processing in 14 different languages. It also provides knowledge packages that allow looking up news events, weather data, flight schedules and encyclopedias. There are also present domains from which agents can process requests including notes, maps, shopping, home automation, sports, maps and taxi researchers. Acquisition of Api.ai by Google will help Api.ai a lot to accelerate its products and introduce new features. Earlier this year, Google launched a new Google cloud natural language API that allows the users to reveal the meaning and structure of the text. Google is currently investing in the core machine learning technologies that can enable natural language interfaces for years. According to the running counter of Api.ai website, they have processed more than 3 billion requests till now. Teaching a robot the human language is a challenging task as there is always a lot of ambiguity in any language and furthermore there are endless numbers of ways to say the same thing.