Microsofts Azure Bot service promotes development of AI assistants

Microsoft has released an artificial intelligence (AI) toolkit that allows companies to create their own virtual assistants. The so-called Azure Bot service can be found on the Github website, a meeting place for open source software.

According to the software supplier, companies need to introduce their own botservice, but often lack technical experience. Microsoft wants to help spread knowledge about AI in this way. Pre-installed components would reduce the learning curve and help more companies roll out their own conversational interfaces. With this, Microsoft says it is responding to an increasing demand from the business community, for customised call assistants that match their brand.

Selecting conversation components

According to Microsoft, open-source technology can be integrated with any device ecosystem, both cloud and hardware environments. According to the software vendor, developers have the possibility to select pre-created conversation components. As soon as a component is added to an app, it can be adapted to the brand identity of the organization.

Developers would be able to get to work quickly thanks to a multitude of functionalities and a minimal implementation of components. Features include email, device management, automatic deployment of Azure resources, and third party skills could easily be connected to virtual assistants.

Focus on business collisions

By now, more than 360,000 developers have registered to use the toolkit. So the company seems to be focusing on specialized business bots, even though it is lagging behind with the Cortana service: the virtual assistant for consumers.

Microsoft already announced in December 2017 to make the Azure Bot service generally available to developers. Almost a year later, the company is fulfilling its promise. Earlier this month, Microsoft also took over the chatbot developer Xoxco.