Dialogflow is a natural language understanding platform used to design and integrate a
conversational user interface
A conversational user interface (CUI) is a user interface for computers that emulates a conversation with a real human. Historically, computers have relied on text-based user interfaces and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) (such as the user pressin ...
into mobile apps, web applications, devices, bots, interactive voice response systems and related uses.
History
In May 2012, Speaktoit received a venture round (funding terms undisclosed) from
Intel Capital
Intel Capital Corporation started off as the investment arm of Intel Corporation in 1991 and in January 2025, it spun off as a standalone investment fund. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies off ...
. In July 2014, Speaktoit closed their Series B funding led by Motorola Solutions Venture Capital with participation from new investor Plug and Play Ventures and existing backers Intel Capital and Alpine Technology Fund.
In September 2014, Speaktoit released api.ai (the voice-enabling engine that powers Assistant) to third-party developers, allowing the addition of voice interfaces to apps based on
Android,
iOS
Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...
,
HTML5
HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...
, and
Cordova.
The SDK's contain voice recognition,
natural language understanding
Natural language understanding (NLU) or natural language interpretation (NLI) is a subset of natural language processing in artificial intelligence that deals with machine reading comprehension. NLU has been considered an AI-hard problem.
Ther ...
, and text-to-speech. api.ai offers a web interface to build and test conversation scenarios. The platform is based on the natural language processing engine built by Speaktoit for its
Assistant application.
Api.ai allows
Internet of Things
Internet of things (IoT) describes devices with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks. The IoT encompasse ...
developers to include natural language
voice interfaces in their products. Assistant and Speaktoit's websites now redirect to api.ai'
website, which redirects to the Dialogflo
website
Google bought the company in September 2016
and was initially known as API.AI; it provides tools to developers building apps ("
Actions") for the
Google Assistant
Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on home automation and mobile devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike ...
virtual assistant
A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to streaml ...
.
The organization discontinued the Assistant app on December 15, 2016.
In October 2017, it was renamed as Dialogflow.
[Introducing Dialogflow, the new name for api.ai](_blank)
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In November 2017, Dialogflow became part of Google Cloud Platform.Dialogflow Release Notes
/ref>
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{Google LLC
Google acquisitions
Natural language processing software