Natural Language Understanding for Chatbots and Assistants Natural language understanding (NLU) helps technology interpret user words. In chatbots and assistants, it turns free language into concrete actions. A good NLU model identifies the user goal (intent) and the key details (entities) needed to complete a task.
Core components include intent recognition, entity extraction, context handling, and dialog management. A simple view:
Intent recognition maps user phrases to goals like “check_order” or “book_flight”. Entity extraction pulls out details such as dates, names, locations, or numbers. Context handling keeps track of prior questions and the current task. Dialog state tracks what the bot has asked and what is left to confirm. Data quality matters. Training data should cover common questions and edge cases, and it should be balanced across key intents. Be mindful of bias and privacy. In a shopping assistant, sample phrases about order status, refunds, and delivery times help the model learn realistic uses.
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