Conversational Agents and Chatbots

Languages facilitate the communication and interaction process among people. Computers learn to communicate with humans intelligently with the help of conversational agents and chatbots based on Natural Language Processing (NLP). Conversational agents and chatbots are gaining popularity in various applications. The development of chatbots or conversational agents is tightly coupled with an organization's customer service requirement. However, the background procedures that power the bot's brain are more or less dependent on Artificial Intelligence-based processes. NLP mechanisms powered by various Deep Learning techniques are often used in the training and development of such intelligent agents. These bots inevitably become more competent as they interact with more people. The interactions between a customer and the bot are usually used as data in further training iterations. Chatbots are likely to respond with faster and more precise suggestions leading to solutions for frequently asked questions. Therefore, the current trends indicate the need for a supplementary system rather than substituting human agents' existing customer service. The customer experience and intelligence of the chatbots are improved with the help of data analysis and training with the use of Deep Learning techniques. The chapter covers the current trends of conversational agents and chatbots, how the various Artificial Intelligence techniques have transformed the development of multiple architectures of these intelligent systems, and it compares the different state-of-the-art NLP-based chatbot architectures.