Abstract: A device can perform device arbitration, even when the device is unable to communicate with a remote system over a wide area network (e.g., the Internet). Upon detecting a wakeword in an utterance, the device can wait a period of time for data to arrive at the device, which, if received, indicates to the device that another speech interface device in the environment detected an utterance. If the device receives data prior to the period of time lapsing, the device can determine the earliest-occurring wakeword based on multiple wakeword occurrence times, and may designate whichever device that detected the wakeword first as the designated device to perform an action with respect to the user speech. To account for differences in sound capture latency between speech interface devices, a pre-calculated time offset value can be applied to wakeword occurrence time(s) during device arbitration.

Abstract: The coding efficiency of an audio codec using a controllable—switchable or even adjustable—harmonic filter tool is improved by performing the harmonicity-dependent controlling of this tool using a temporal structure measure in addition to a measure of harmonicity in order to control the harmonic filter tool. In particular, the temporal structure of the audio signal is evaluated in a manner which depends on the pitch. This enables to achieve a situation-adapted control of the harmonic filter tool so that in situations where a control made solely based on the measure of harmonicity would decide against or reduce the usage of this tool, although using the harmonic filter tool would, in that situation, increase the coding efficiency, the harmonic filter tool is applied, while in other situations where the harmonic filter tool may be inefficient or even destructive, the control reduces the appliance of the harmonic filter tool appropriately.

Abstract: A method and a system for interpreting conversational authoring of information models. The system includes an understanding module, a managing module, and a generating module. The understanding module is configured to understand a natural language input to interpret an output. The managing module is configured to construct an information model based on the output of the understanding module. The generating module configured is to prompt, as a response to the natural language inputs, wherein the natural language inputs determine concepts and relationships of the concepts. The method includes receiving an interactive dialog between a conversational agent and an information model designer in natural language to produce an information model. The method can further include validating the information model using an information model management system. The method can include interpreting the information model with the use of an application.

Abstract: An apparatus for decoding an encoded audio signal to obtain a reconstructed audio signal is provided, having: a receiving interface for receiving one or more frames, a coefficient generator, and a signal reconstructor. The coefficient generator is configured to determine one or more first audio signal coefficients, and one or more noise coefficients. Moreover, the coefficient generator is configured to generate one or more second audio signal coefficients, depending on the one or more first audio signal coefficients and depending on the one or more noise coefficients.

Abstract: Systems, apparatus and methods are described including operations for a dual mode GMM (Gaussian Mixture Model) scoring accelerator for both speech and video data.

Abstract: Processing stacked data structures is provided. A system receives an input audio signal detected by a sensor of a local computing device, identifies an acoustic signature, and identifies an account corresponding to the signature. The system establishes a session and a profile stack data structure including a first profile layer having policies configured by a third-party device. The system pushes, to the profile stack data structure, a second profile layer retrieved from the account. The system parses the input audio signal to identify a request and a trigger keyword. The system generates, based on the trigger keyword and the second profile layer, a first action data structure compatible with the first profile layer. The system provides the first action data structure for execution. The system disassembles the profile stack data structure to remove the first profile layer or the second profile layer from the profile stack data structure.

Abstract: Systems and methods for providing a dynamically configurable interface for structured note dictation input for one or more electronic health record (EHR) systems generally comprise a dictation user interface, a dictation management subsystem, and at least one EHR system having a plurality of electronic medical records. The dictation management subsystem generally comprises a computing device configured to moderate the recognized text for a particular EHR system and particular electronic health record.

Abstract: Improved techniques for proactive identification of errors are provided. Documents are analyzed, using natural language processing (NLP) models, to identify entities in the documents. The documents are processed with the NLP models to identify relationships among the entities, and each of the entities is stored in a data store, where the data store further includes an indication of the identified relationships among the entities. A draft correspondence is received, and it is determined that the draft correspondence includes a first entity and a second entity, where the first entity and the second entity have a first relationship. Upon determining that the first relationship conflicts with at least one of the relationships stored in the data store, a suggested revision for the draft correspondence is generated.

Abstract: A method of analyzing text is performed at an electronic system that includes one or more processors and memory storing instructions for execution by the one or more processors. The method includes extracting terms from a corpus of text and generating a plurality of rankings of the extracted terms. Each ranking of the plurality of rankings is based on a respective metric of a plurality of metrics. The method further includes defining a set of terms, which includes selecting a number of top-ranked terms from each ranking of the plurality of rankings. The set of terms may be provided for display and/or used as search terms to perform a search.

Abstract: An output sentence generation apparatus for automatically generating one output sentence from a plurality of input keywords includes a candidate sentence generator incorporating a learned neural network configured to take in the plurality of keywords and generate a plurality of candidate sentences each including at least some of the plurality of keywords, and an evaluation outputter configured to calculate an overlap ratio for each of the plurality of candidate sentences generated by the candidate sentence generator and increase an evaluation of the candidate sentence with a small overlap ratio to thereby determine an output sentence from the plurality of candidate sentences. The overlap ratio is the number of occurrences of an overlapping word with respect to the number of occurrences of all words included in the corresponding candidate sentence.

Abstract: There is provided an information processing apparatus capable of enhancing the possibility of outputting information with granularity desired by a user, the information processing apparatus including: a generation unit configured to generate second text data on a basis of first text data and information regarding a first user's auditory characteristics; and an output unit configured to output output information regarding the second text data. The generation unit controls granularity of the second text data on a basis of the information regarding the first user's auditory characteristics.

Abstract: A method of facilitating natural language interactions, a method of simplifying an expression, a system for facilitating natural language interactions, and a system for simplifying an expression. The method of facilitating natural language interactions includes the steps of: processing a corpus to select a natural language expression from the corpus; simplifying the selected natural language expression into a plurality of simplified expression portions; wherein the plurality of simplified expression portions is representative of the meaning of the selected natural language expression; and presenting the plurality of simplified expression portions to a user so as to receive a user expression from the user for comparison with the selected natural language expression.

Abstract: A method for information processing includes collecting input information, obtaining feedback information in response to the input information, and outputting the feedback information. The feedback information contains query sub-information.

Abstract: A method and device for automatically increasing the spectral bandwidth of an audio signal including generating a “mapping” (or “prediction”) matrix based on the analysis of a reference wideband signal and a reference narrowband signal, the mapping matrix being a transformation matrix to predict high frequency energy from a low frequency energy envelope, generating an energy envelope analysis of an input narrowband audio signal, generating a resynthesized noise signal by processing a random noise signal with the mapping matrix and the envelope analysis, high-pass filtering the resynthesized noise signal, and summing the high-pass filtered resynthesized noise signal with the input narrowband audio signal. Other embodiments are disclosed.

Abstract: Among other things, a developer of an interaction application for an enterprise can create items of content to be provided to an assistant platform for use in responses to requests of end-users. The developer can deploy the interaction application using defined items of content and an available general interaction model including intents and sample utterances having slots. The developer can deploy the interaction application without requiring the developer to formulate any of the intents, sample utterances, or slots of the general interaction model.

Abstract: An apparatus for decoding an encoded audio signal to obtain a reconstructed audio signal includes a receiving interface for receiving one or more frames comprising information on a plurality of audio signal samples of an audio signal spectrum of the encoded audio signal, and a processor for generating the reconstructed audio signal. The processor is configured to generate the reconstructed audio signal by fading a modified spectrum to a target spectrum, if a current frame is not received by the receiving interface or if the current frame is received by the receiving interface but is corrupted, wherein the modified spectrum includes a plurality of modified signal samples, wherein, for each of the modified signal samples of the modified spectrum, an absolute value of the modified signal sample is equal to an absolute value of one of the audio signal samples of the audio signal spectrum.

Abstract: A dictionary data structure is described. The data structure is made up of first, second, and third tables. The first table is comprised of entries each representing a natural language term, each entry of the first table containing a term ID identifying its term. The second table is comprised of entries each representing a definition, each entry of the second containing a definition ID identifying its definition. The third table is comprised of entries each representing correspondence between a terminate definition defining the term, each entry of the third table containing term ID identifying the defined term and a definition ID identifying the defining definition. The contents of the data structure are usable to identify any definitions corresponding to a term.

Abstract: A Semantic Textual Similarity System comprising a first Long Short Term Memory, LSTM, branch adapted to be operative, to determine text similarity, on a first text corpus, the first text corpus comprising a plurality of first text elements; wherein each first text element has a first number of distinct subdivisions. The system also comprises a second LSTM branch adapted to be operative, to determine text similarity, on a second text corpus, the second text corpus comprising a plurality of second text elements, wherein each second text element has a second number of distinct subdivisions.

Abstract: A keyword generation apparatus, comprises a vocabulary acquisition unit that acquires a keyword uttered by a first user; a first positional information acquisition unit that acquires first positional information including information representing a location at which the first user has uttered the keyword; a storage unit that stores the first positional information and the keyword in association with each other; a second positional information acquisition unit that acquires second positional information including information representing a current position of a second user; and an extraction unit that extracts a keyword unique to a locality in which the second user is positioned from the storage unit based on the second positional information.

Abstract: Methods and systems for scoring written text based on use of idiomatic expressions, including reading pre-selected idiomatic expressions in a canonical form into memory, expanding idiomatic expressions from the canonical form, reading a written response into the memory, pre-processing the written response, searching the pre-processed written response for idiomatic expressions, and assigning a score to the written response. The score may be based at least in part on the number of idiomatic expressions in the written response. Corresponding apparatuses, systems, and methods are also disclosed.