Amazon Lex is a service that allows developers to build conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text. It uses the same deep learning technology as Amazon Alexa to understand user intent and respond conversationally. Developers can build bots using Lex that can be deployed to messaging platforms and mobile apps. Lex provides tools to efficiently create conversations through utterances, intents, slots and fulfillment modeling while automatically scaling.

1. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Building Chatbots
with Amazon Lex
Ric Harvey Randall Hunt
Technical Developer Evangelist
randhunt@amazon.com
@jrhunt
ranman

2. Amazon Lex
Why did we build Amazon Lex?
What is Amazon Lex?
Demo: Car Rental Application
How do I get started using Amazon Lex?
Q&A

3. Why did we build
Amazon Lex?

4. Advent of conversational interactions
1st gen:
Punch cards & memory registers
2nd gen:
Pointers & sliders
3nd gen:
Conversational interfaces

5. Conversational Access
On-demand
Accessible
Efficient
Natural
Conversational Access
On-demand
Accessible
Efficient
Natural
Conversational access

6. Developer challenges
Conversational interfaces need to combine a large number of
sophisticated algorithms and technologies
Speech
recognition Language
understanding
Business logic
Disparate
systems
Authentication
Messaging
platforms
Scale Testing
Security
Availability
Mobile

7. Amazon Lex – Features
Text and speech language understanding: powered by the same
technology as Amazon Alexa
Deployment to chat services
(Web/Mobile Apps, Facebook, Kik, Slack, Twilio SMS)
Designed for builders: efficient and intuitive tools to build
conversations; scales automatically
Versioning and alias support@

8. Text and speech language understanding
Speech
recognition
Natural language
understanding
Powered by the same deep learning technology as Alexa

9. Designed for builders
Efficient and intuitive tools to build conversations

10. Deployment to chat services
Facebook
Messenger
Mobile
Card Description
Button 1
Button 2
Button 3
Card
Description
Option 1
Option 2
Authentication
Rich formattingOne-click deployment
Amazon Lex
Twilio SMS
. . .

11. AWS Mobile Hub integration
Authenticate users
Analyze user behavior
Store and share media
Synchronize data
More ….
Track retention
Conversational bots
Amazon LexAWS Mobile SDKs
AWS Mobile Hub

12. Versioning and alias support
AliasVersioning
• Supported for intents, slots, and bots
• Enables multideveloper environment
• Rollback to previous versions
• Deploy different aliases to different platforms
• Run different stacks for dev, stage and prod environments
• Target different user groups with different aliases
v1 v2 v3 latest
v1 Dev
v2 Stage
v3 Prod

13. Amazon Lex use cases
Informational Bots
Chatbots for everyday consumer requests
Application Bots
Build powerful interfaces to mobile applications
• News updates
• Weather information
• Game scores …
• Book tickets
• Order food
• Manage bank accounts …
Enterprise Productivity Bots
Streamline enterprise work activities and improve efficiencies
• Check sales numbers
• Marketing performance
• Inventory status …
Internet of Things (IoT) Bots
Enable conversational interfaces for device interactions
• Wearables
• Appliances
• Auto …

14. Amazon Lex
Utterances
Spoken or typed phrases that invoke
your intent
BookHotel
Intents
An intent performs an action in
response to natural language user
input
Slots
Slots are input data required to fulfill
the intent
Fulfillment
Fulfillment mechanism for your intent

15. “Book a hotel”
Book hotel
NYC
“Book a hotel in
NYC”
Automatic speech
recognition
Hotel booking
New York City
Natural language
understanding
Intent/slot
Model
UtterancesHotel Booking
City New York City
Check in Nov 30th
Check out Dec 2nd
“Your hotel is booked for
Nov 30th”
Amazon Polly
Confirmation: “Your hotel
is booked for Nov 30th”
“Can I go ahead
with the booking?
a
in

16. Utterances
I’d like to book a hotel
I want to make my hotel reservations
I want to book a hotel in New York City
Can you help me book my hotel?

17. Slots
Destination City New York City, Seattle, London …
Slot Type Values
Check in Date Valid dates
Check out Date Valid dates

18. Slot elicitation
I’d like to book a hotel
What date do you check in?
New York City
Sure, what city do you want to book?
Nov 30th Check in
11/30/2017
City
New York City

19. Fulfillment & Response
AWS Lambda
integration
Return to
client
User input parsed to derive
intents and slot values.
Output returned to client for
further processing.
Intents and slots passed to
AWS Lambda function for
business logic
implementation.

20. Save, build, and publish
Save Build
Saving your bot
preserves the current
state on the server
Building your bot
creates versions
that you can test
Publish
Publishing your app will create a
version of your bot and provide
an alias to your clients
Test
Test your bot in a
chat window on the
console

21. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Demo:
Best Editor

22. Monitoring
Track your bot
Request latency
Missed utterance count
Traffic by channel

23. Amazon Lex pricing
Text Speech
Price per 1000 requests $0.75 $4.00
Free Tier*
(requests per month) 10,000 5,000
*Available for the first year upon sign-up to new Amazon Lex customers

24. Amazon Lex – technology
Amazon Lex
Automatic Speech
Recognition (ASR)
Natural Language
Understanding (NLU)
Same technology that powers Alexa
Amazon Cognito CloudTrail CloudWatch
AWS Services
Action
AWS Lambda
Authentication
& Visibility
Speech
API
Language
API
Fulfillment
End Users
Developers
Console
SDK
Intents,
Slots,
Prompts,
Utterances
Input:
Speech
or Text
Multi-Platform Clients:
Mobile, IoT, Web,
Chat
API
Output:
Speech (via Amazon Polly TTS)
or Text

25. How do I get started using
Amazon Lex?

26. Sign up for a free account @
https://aws.amazon.com/lex
Build your first bot!
✔
✔
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27. © 2018, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Building Chatbots
with Amazon Lex
Randall Hunt
Technical Developer Evangelist
randhunt@amazon.com
@jrhunt
ranman