Abstract: A method of obtaining a response to a query inputted by a user, the method comprising: receiving a user inputted query; encoding said query to produce a context vector; retrieving responses with associated response vectors; scoring response vectors in the database against the context vector wherein the scoring is a measure of the similarity between the context vector and a response vector; and outputting the responses with the closest response vectors, wherein encoding said query to produce a context vector comprises using a pre-trained model, wherein said pre-trained model has been trained using corresponding queries and responses such that an encoding is used that maximises the similarity between the response vector and context vector for a corresponding query and response.