Microsoft's beta language service gets C# dev kit

Yet another chatbot to train

Microsoft has pushed out a C# software development kit (SDK) for its in-beta language parsing API, LUIS.

LUIS – the Language Understanding Intelligent Service – is another chunk of the chatbot capability Redmond is so keen on.

It's a model-making environment which Microsoft reckons helps developers teach existing apps to understand “book tickets to Paris”, “turn on the lights” and so on.

That's covered by LuisClient: interactions are handled by the “predict” and “reply” functions. Devs can also “create handlers for each intent (as shown in the sample) and setup a router using these handlers in order to have the router handle the responses instead of doing so within the client application”, Redmond explains at GitHub.

You need an app first, though, because it's when you publish the app here that you get the app ID and app key to use Luis.

The idea is to relieve developers of as much effort as possible, with models built for Cortana and Bing doing the hard work.

“Turn on the lights” – the “intent” – needs only a simple response (“ok”), but as Microsoft explains, “I'd like to buy a black dress” needs a more nuanced response (“what size?”, for example).

That's the bit Microsoft is trying to simplify, with a developer's interface to define both the intent, and set the response parameters. Luis includes pre-built entities; the developer then trains the model, and finally publishes it to an HTTP endpoint as JSON. ®