Building your own chatbots with API.AI & Cloud Functions

Serverless with Cloud Functions

Chatbots API.AI conversational UX Google Home / Assistant Actions on Google

@glaforge @manekinekko Google Assistant — the assistant platform Google Home — the hardware device connecting you to the assistant Assistant SDK — a hardware kit to create your own Home-like devices Agent / chatbot / action — an actual app serving a particular purpose Built-in actions — actions that can be invoked directly from Home / assistant Conversation actions — your own actions, with your own voice Actions SDK — a software SDK for creating actions API.AI — a platform for creating conversational interfaces A bit of vocabulary!

@glaforge @manekinekko Assistant world chatbots world Cloud / on-prem business logic Assistant SDK API.AI SDKs API.AI’s integrations API.AI SDKs or REST API API.AI world

Chatbots of the past...

Bots of today & tomorrow...

@glaforge @manekinekko Game changer: ML-powered voice recognition

@glaforge @manekinekko Game changer: Natural Language Processing @glaforge @manekinekko

The concept Ok Google, let me talk to Cloud Next! Hi, I’ll be your guide to Cloud Next, I can help you explore topics or pick a session to attend. What would you like to know? When is the next Machine Learning talk? Sure! Here’s Cloud Next. Enter Earcon The next session about Machine Learning is “A bot to schedule the agenda of your conference” in room 220 on Thursday at 1:55pm. Is there another topic you’re interested in? Exit Earcon . . .

No content

Modern chatbot concepts I want to eat some bananas How many of them? INTENT → “eat-something” ENTITY → “banana”

Modern chatbot concepts How many calories are there? There are 89 calories in a banana A natural conversation that learns from past exchanges CONTEXT → remember the details of the conversation

@glaforge @manekinekko From idea to development

@glaforge @manekinekko Your chatbot workflow What to build How to build it How to deliver it Design Develop Deploy

Design What to build

@glaforge @manekinekko Create your persona 1. List out your core brand attributes What words define the experience you’re shooting for? 2. Correlate to attributes that will define your functional design principles How will those manifest in the design? 3. Define some attributes that you’d want to infuse into the voice, style of writing, and personality of the dialog What personality traits match your strategy? 4. Style guide & “bio sketch” Practical application and maintain consistency for longevity of your experience knowledgeable helpful encouraging data rich recommending proactive geeky eager motivating

@glaforge @manekinekko Example style guide INSTEAD OF... IS MORE LIKELY TO SAY... I found Up for that? Does that sound good? Maybe later While you’re at it... what’s going on I did not receive a response if you feel you have reached this message in error please select from one of the following X options to help us serve you better for questions related to... you have entered that was an invalid… we require that you... please try again for faster answers we’re sorry, we are unable to… I did not understand MIGHT SAY THINGS LIKE... so you can keep up to date on, I’ll look it up right now Sure, that’s coming up Right around the corner from… That session’s full, but… You might like lets need can’t because more about help right now one sec stay allows require unable to due to additional regarding assist currently please hold remain WOULD NEVER SAY... @glaforge @manekinekko

@glaforge @manekinekko Resources — sample dialogs & checklist 1. Canonical “Happy path” 2. First time experience 3. Tapered experience (return user) 4. Repair 5. Personality questions g.co/dev/ActionsChecklist

@glaforge @manekinekko Resources — conversation design guides g.co/dev/ActionsDesign

@glaforge @manekinekko Cross-platform tool for building advanced conversational interfaces ListSessions( topics.ComputeEngine); “What Compute Engine talks are there?”

#gcfchatbots @glaforge #gcfchatbots @glaforge DEMO API.AI

Develop How to build it

@glaforge @manekinekko Life of a conversation “Ok Google, talk to Cloud Next” Invoke “Cloud Next” action “Hi! Welcome to Cloud Next...” Speech to Text “The next Machine Learning Session is…” “I want to hear more about Machine Learning” Text to Speech “Sure, here’s Cloux Next” Speech to Text, NLP, Knowledge Graph, ML Ranking, User Profile Text to Speech

@glaforge @manekinekko Serverless! @glaforge @manekinekko

@glaforge @manekinekko A “serverless platform for building event-based microservices”. Function-as-a-service approach Great fit for event-oriented architectures, supporting 3 kind of triggers: ● Cloud Storage updates ● Cloud Pub/Sub messages ● Direct HTTP calls Cloud Functions

@glaforge @manekinekko Cloud Functions Completely serverless & fully managed service ⇒ don’t worry about the ops! Automatic scaling and super-fast ⇒ grows with the success of your project ⇒ cost-effective Open and familiar ⇒ JavaScript / Node.js

@glaforge @manekinekko server.js NPM dependencies ● actions-on-google ● node-fetch Export a function with the ApiAiAssistant handling the requests const Assistant = require('actions-on-google').ApiAiAssistant; const fetch = require('node-fetch'); function listTopicsIntent(assistant) { fetch('https://cloudnext.withgoogle.com/api/v1/categories') .then(response => response.text()) .then(text => { let data = JSON.parse(text.split('\n')[1]); let topics = data.categories .filter(cat => cat.name === "Topics"); .children.map(topic => topic.name).join(', ')); assistant.ask(`The topics covered are: ${topics}. What do you want to learn?'`); }); } exports.agent = function(request, response) { var assistant = new Assistant({ request, response }); assistant.handleRequest(listTopicsIntent); };

@glaforge @manekinekko Architecture in development

@glaforge @manekinekko Architecture in development ngrok

@glaforge @manekinekko Fast feedback loop: Ngrok + Functions emulator Google Cloud Functions emulator Ngrok secure internet tunnels to localhost LIVE RELOADING DEBUG IN CHROME

#gcfchatbots @glaforge #gcfchatbots @glaforge DEMO Cloud Functions (emulator + ngrok)

@glaforge @manekinekko

Deploy How to deliver it

@glaforge @manekinekko Deploying Cloud Functions In production gcloud beta functions deploy agent \ --trigger-http \ --stage-bucket gs://gcp-next-2017-agent/ Locally functions deploy agent --trigger-http

@glaforge @manekinekko Review & approval Web-based portal ● Triggering Information ● Merchandising and information Approvals ● Automatic and manual policy checks ● Turn around in about 1 week

@glaforge @manekinekko Discovery Discovery patterns ● Guaranteed invocation ○ “Talk to Cloud Next” ● Discovery Patterns ○ “What’s happening at Next?” Google Home app

API.AI integrations Assistant surface area, and many others

@glaforge @manekinekko Integrations Actions on Google ● Google Home, Pixel… ● and more to come External integrations ● Slack, Facebook Messenger, ● Twitter, Twilio, Skype, Tropo, ● Telegram, Kik, LINE, Cisco Spark, ● Alexa, Cortana

API.AI features

Summary

@glaforge @manekinekko Key takeaways 1. You can extend the Google Assistant with your custom action 2. Talking with humans is challenging, but API.AI makes it approachable 3. GCP offers a powerful platform for hosting business logic

Thank You.