Behind the scenes of the Alana Alexa Prize entry

Achieving third place in the Alexa Prize in 2017 and 2018 shows the influential role Alana is taking in advancing AI conversations.

The conversation started here.

The Alexa Prize is about pushing the boundaries of conversational AI. It’s not about chatbots and voice assistants – instead the focus is on paving the way for what comes next.

The competition invited around 250 teams to create a socialbot capable of holding an engaging, meaningful discussion with a human for at least 20 minutes.

How Alana shaped the conversation?

The challenge with sustaining extended AI conversations is taking the dialogue beyond a simple, question and response path. To achieve the 20-minute target set by the Alexa Prize, Alana needed to proactively identify and pursue new conversational opportunities. Using its memory-capturing capability the Alana entry was able to make associations that allowed dialogue to take multiple turns.

But equally important was creating engaging conversation with a natural flow between different subjects. Listen to the Alana entry and notice how the attention to natural language creates a smoother conversation. This shows how far things are advancing from the stilted discourse often associated with AI conversations.

Are you ready to find out what Alana can bring to your AI conversations?