Building a Personal Assistant

In this talk we look at the landscape of virtual personal assistants available, and dive into what it takes to create one. We examine the need for a personality, the complexities of understanding user requests in natural language, and the technology required to respond to requests with contextually relevant answers and actions. We examine further how it is possible to help users complete more complex multi-step tasks, avoid issues around sensitive topics, and re-engage with users on a daily basis. Finally we look at how others can build on existing personal assistants to create further, specialized assistants.