Voice Options for your Chatbot

See [[Creating a Watson Chatbot with Discovery]], [[Integrating Discovery and Assistant]], and the [[Main AI Page]].

Natural interfaces vs Explicit interfaces

Speech uses less effort on behalf of the user, apparently. This might have taken a step backwards as early implementations have given users an expectation of a convoluted ‘dialect’ one must use when talking with machines.

Three main paths to Voice Assistants

1. You can make the chatbot available through phonecalls while implementing the Assistant-to-Voice solution yourself (platform like Twilio).
2. Implementing an application that marries Watson Assistant and Watson Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech APIs
3. Phone-based systems using the IBM Voice Agent with Watson

Roll-your-own

Pros:

• Easily accessible
  • Can be used over traditional phone numbers
• No downloads required
  • No need to have the internet or install an app

Cons:

• From-scratch implementation
  • You need to program and test the system yourself
• Low flexibility

Watson Assistant-Text-to-Speech-to-Text

Pros:

• Highly customisable and Flexible
  • If you need special functionality that no other system provides

Cons:

• User usually has to download an application
• Service orchestration is from scratch (IBM/etc infrastructure)
  • You might need to develop it for multiple OSs (iOS/Android)

Voice Agent with Watson

Pros:

• Easily accessible
  • You’re given your own SIP trunk
  • People can barge in and interrupt the assistant
  • Easier to go straight to a human agent
• No downloads required
• Service orchestration pre-done
  • Basically, the second option but handled for you

Cons

• On-premises IBM Voice Gateway required for some advanced features.
  • Requires IBM’s hybrid cloud-baremetal service
• Intermediate flexibility