Contents

Azure AI Platform - Updates from Build 2018

Contents

Microsoft’s annual BUILD conference took again place from 7th - 9th May 2018 with a lot of new and awesome updates for the Azure AI platform. The following list should give you a short overview of all news and announcements:

  • Bot Builder SDK v4 now in preview:
  • Bot Framework Emulator v4 now in preview:
    • Updates and Improvements
      • “The new emulator includes features like an improved dynamic layout model, support for multiple bot configurations, simplified bot components management, and the ability to inspect responses from and deep link to connected services such as LUIS and QnA.” Read more…
    • Download here
  • New Bot Builder tools now in preview:
    • Chatdown  - “Prototype mock conversations in markdown and convert the markdown to transcripts you can load and view in the new V4 Bot Framework Emulator”
    • MsBot - “Create and manage connected services in your bot configuration file”
    • LUDown - “Build LUIS language understanding models using markdown files”
    • LUIS - “Create and manage your LUIS.ai  applications”
    • QnAMaker - “Create and manage QnAMaker.ai  Knowledge Bases”
    • Dispatch - “Build language models allowing you to dispatch between disparate components (such as QnA, LUIS and custom code)”
    • LUISGen - “Autogenerate backing C#/Typescript classesfor your LUIS intents and entities”
  • LUIS updates:
    • Regex entities - “Regex entities allow the identification of an entity in the utterance based on a regular expression” Read more…
    • Patterns - “Patterns enable developers to effectively define intents without having to provide many utterances. Patterns could also encompass entities with variable length represented as Patterns.any entities” Read more…
  • QnAMaker.ai is now GA
  • Cognitive Services updates:
    • There have been some updates announced for various Cognitive Service APIs - please check out this link for details
  • Project Conversation Learner:
    • This is one of the new labs in the Cognitive Services portfolio, which lets you build conversational interfaces like bots that learn from example interactions. Read more…
  • Project Personality Chat:
    • This lab enhances your bot by adding small talk capabilities out-of-the box which makes it easier for you to build a comprehensive bot which is capable of doing smalltalk either professional, friendly or even humorous. Read more…