API.ai helps bots on different platforms share machine learning

Bot creation platform API.ai today announced that its services can now be used to share machine learning between bots on different platforms, so a bot made on Skype can quickly share knowledge with a bot on Twilio.

One-click integrations make it easy to convert bots for use on Facebook Messenger, Slack, Skype, Twilio, Kik, Line, Cisco Spark and Tropo. Further, the company offers a dashboard that can be used to manage conversations across chat platforms.

“The main value for developers now is if you want a bot for Facebook or Slack, you develop and train differently because they have different natural language processing platforms, and what we’re offering is you can train your agent once and have it up and running on all the platforms,” said API.ai CEO Ilya Gelfenbeyn in an interview with VentureBeat.

Above: API.ai dashboard where users can manage communication across chat clients. Credit: API.ai

Formerly known as Speaktoit, API.ai’s virtual assistant was released in 2011 six months before Siri. The API that powers API.ai’s virtual assistant was made available to developers in 2014.

Last month, it partnered with Cisco to help developers build bots for the networking giant’s Spark and Tropo platforms.

Based in Sunnyvale, California, more than 50,000 developers have used the platform’s API or used its machine learning technology to make text or auditory bots for chat apps and devices, the company said.