Soundhound, Inc.

Soundhound Ai Ip, LLC

Scott Halstvedt

Keyvan Mohajer

Bernard Mont-Reynaud

Kazi Asif Wadud

Robert MacRAE

Bernard Mont-reynaud

Jon Grossmann

A system and method of real-time feedback confirmation to solicit a virtual assistant response from an evolving semantic state of at least a portion of an utterance. A user accesses a virtual assistant on an electronic device having the system and/or method configured to capture a command, a question, and/or a fulfillment request from audio such as, the speech emitted from the speaking user. The speech may be intercepted by a speech engine configured to transcribe the speech into text that is matched with the fragment pattern's regular expression to generate a fragment and/or the speech may be processed with a machine learning model to identify fragments. The fragments are identified by a domain handler configured to update a data structure of the current semantic state of the utterance in real-time on an interface of an electronic device.

Real-time natural language processing and fulfillment

A method of controlling an engagement state of an agent during a human-machine dialog is provided. The method can include receiving a spoken request that is a conditional locking request, wherein the conditional locking request uses a natural language expression to explicitly specify a locking condition, which is a predicate, storing the predicate in a format that can be evaluated when needed by the agent, entering a conditionally locked state in response to the conditional locking request, in the conditionally locked state, receiving a multiplicity of requests without a need for a wakeup indicator, and for a request from the multiplicity of requests evaluating the predicate upon receiving the request, and processing the request if the predicate is true.

Controlling an engagement state of an agent during a human-machine dialog

Original concepts obtained from a query may be augmented with additional concepts connected to the original concepts in a concept graph in response to determining that the original concepts did not match a sufficient number of bid functions. The augmented set of concepts may then be evaluated with respect to the bid functions to identify matching ad functions. This process may be repeated until a sufficient number of matching ad functions are found. A bid amount of the matching bid functions may be calculated, such as based on semantic information obtained as a result of the query. The bid amounts may further be based on environmental information. A bid function is selected based on the bid amounts and the content associated with the bid function is provided to the source of the query. The content may be selected based on the semantic information.

Concept-based augmentation of queries for applying a buyer-defined function

Agents engage and disengage with users intelligently. Users can tell agents to remain engaged without requiring a wakeword. Engaged states can support modal dialogs and barge-in. Users can cause disengagement explicitly. Disengagement can be conditional based on timeout, change of user, or environmental conditions. Engagement can be one-time or recurrent. Recurrent states can be attentive or locked. Locked states can be unconditional or conditional, including being reserved to support user continuity. User continuity can be tested by matching parameters or tracking user by many modalities including microphone arrays, cameras, and other sensors.

Managing agent engagement in a man-machine dialog

A server receives a user audio stream, the stream comprising multiple utterances. A query-processing module of the server continuously listens to and processes the utterances. The processing includes parsing successive utterances and recognizing corresponding queries, taking appropriate actions while the utterances are being received. In some embodiments, a query may be parsed and executed before the previous query's execution is complete.

Techniques for concurrent processing of user speech

A virtual assistant receives natural language interpretation hypotheses for user queries, determines entities and attributes from the interpretations, and requests data from appropriate data sources. A cost function estimates the cost of each data source request. Cost functions include factors such as contract pricing, access latency, and data quality. Based on the estimated cost, the virtual assistant sends requests to a plurality of data sources, each of which might be able to provide data necessary to answer the user query. By including user credits in the cost function, the virtual assistant provides better quality of results and answer latency for paying users. The virtual assistant minimizes latency by answering using data from the first responding data source or provides a latency guarantee by answering with the most accurate data received by a deadline. The virtual assistant measures data source response latency and caches responses for expensive requests.

Dynamic choice of data sources in natural language query processing

An ad processor evaluates bid functions that are based on concepts that might be generated from interpretations of natural language expressions. Ad buyers provide the functions with corresponding ads to ad processors. Bid functions are further based on the values of semantic information referenced by expressions. Bid functions are further based on environmental information. Ad buyers are able to modify bid functions. Ads may be provided in the form of questions, and may be indicated by an identifying sound. Upon finding no expression concepts within a bid function, the set of expression concepts is expanded according to strengths of connections between concepts in a concept graph.

Ad bidding based on a buyer-defined function

A query-processing system processes an input audio stream that represents a succession of queries spoken by a user. The query-processing system listens continuously to the input audio stream, parses queries and takes appropriate actions in mid-stream. In some embodiments, the system processes queries in parallel, limited by serial constraints. In some embodiments, the system parses and executes queries while a previous query's execution is still in progress. To accommodate users who tend to speak slowly and express a thought in separate parts, the query-processing system halts the outputting of results corresponding to a previous query if it detects that a new speech utterance modifies the meaning of the previous query.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Scott Halstvedt