Définition : Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural Language Processing is the cornerstone of artificial intelligence, machine learning and linguistics.

It is an essential building block of any conversational system, enabling it to detect users’ intentions through lexical, semantic and syntactic analysis. As such, it can serve to give a machine a voice.

FYI: Natural Language Processing is currently used in voice assistants like Google Home and Amazon Alexa, in automatic translation, and as a means of optimizing the comprehension level of chatbots.

An NLP engine employs a sequence of mathematical processes and comparisons to “clean up” the user’s input, possibly correcting certain errors or applying synonyms, in order to identify all of the information that’s useful for purposes of comprehension.

All of this makes it possible to detect the intention, in other words, to understand the needs of the user and possibly the related attributes.

For example…
Request: “I’d like to order a cheese pizza for 2 people for 8:00.”
This request contains:
An “intention,” which is “to order to eat”

A sequence of information, or “entities,” that allow specifying the intention (a cheese pizza, for 2 people, for 8:00)

The only thing missing is the delivery address, which the chatbot can ask the user. If all of the information is missing, the chatbot will patiently ask all of the necessary questions in order to perform the transaction!