The FB Messenger stack

In Chapter 1, Conversational UI is our Future, we outlined the building blocks of conversational applications, focusing on speech recognition for voicebots, which is less relevant in the FB Messenger use case, and the need for a strong NLU component to understand the user's intent. The NLU, as we defined, fulfills the task of reading comprehension. The computer reads the text and then tries to grasp the user's intent behind it.

To accomplish this capability, in 2015, FB acquired Wit.ai, which is a speech recognition and natural language processing service. While originally, the goal was to take advantage of the voice recognition capabilities and voice interface APIs of Wit.ai, it ended up becoming the NLU engine of FB Messenger, improving the understanding level of bots within the Messenger platform.

Building a FB Messenger bot using Wit.ai

For this example, we will provide the user with a way to order this book. This is very similar to the process we followed on the...