TechCrunch’s Messenger bot gets smarter and more conversational

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtdjvk17brNqkvzUUFcIL5-VSFdqVsJkyO_XUDO5gVNjpVRO1k_L_yN3LObk6GhZF3EE9hKcplVaCavvqg2oAYSJ4yoVJvK_cVoq5bngkphA8No4yBVahxLSP8nq9GS5da8a4l7nbGckU/s1600/facebook-messenger1_620x349.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtdjvk17brNqkvzUUFcIL5-VSFdqVsJkyO_XUDO5gVNjpVRO1k_L_yN3LObk6GhZF3EE9hKcplVaCavvqg2oAYSJ4yoVJvK_cVoq5bngkphA8No4yBVahxLSP8nq9GS5da8a4l7nbGckU/s640/facebook-messenger1_620x349.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> The best bot on Messenger just got better. We’ve teamed up with Chatfuel and Bitext to add Bitext’s NLP Middleware to the TechCrunch Messenger bot. This enhanced version adds functionality for conversational interaction, improved natural language understanding, and unique features like negation understanding. You can check out our new and improved Messenger bot here.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> To get a better understanding of what the new functionality looks like in action, here are some examples of what the latest version of the bot can do.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <b><u><span style="color: red;">1) Understands more natural language queries</span></u></b></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> More complex but natural queries like “do you have anything about Google,”; “give me Facebook news,” or, “show me the latest about SpaceX” are now recognized by the bot.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <b><u><span style="color: red;">2) Conversational double intent</span></u></b></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> You can now use the word “and” to search for news that shares multiple characteristics. For example, you could type “I want news on Microsoft and Apple” to find news that specifically mentions both companies. Another example would be “show me news about Messenger and bots.”</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <span style="color: red;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <span style="color: red;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <b><u><span style="color: red;">3) Conversational negation</span></u></b></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> This allows you to exclude certain items in your search. For example, if you wanted to see news about Amazon but didn’t want to see anything about Whole Foods you could type “I want news about Amazon but not Whole Foods.” Another example would be “show me news about Apple but not iPhones.”</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> We’re also looking into adding some other updates, including conversational pagination and video search. There’s also a possibility that we might bring this bot to Slack. More to come soon.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg54YfdelU4oiuoVi14ueQJYIY7COzaqEKzckPuEEGLtnnib1DnQ79r_fqTX0Zi8djj6lF7tJ0SYOeyXlXPinoy-we1ve5y4o1snJH_073u7stxN6ptp06NLTI6Av5GUs5Vx9Uy4WHulCY/s1600/Messanger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg54YfdelU4oiuoVi14ueQJYIY7COzaqEKzckPuEEGLtnnib1DnQ79r_fqTX0Zi8djj6lF7tJ0SYOeyXlXPinoy-we1ve5y4o1snJH_073u7stxN6ptp06NLTI6Av5GUs5Vx9Uy4WHulCY/s640/Messanger.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> </div>

TechCrunch’s Messenger bot gets smarter and more conversational

The best bot on Messenger just got better. We’ve teamed up with Chatfuel and Bitext to add Bitext’s NLP Middleware to the TechCrun...

Read more »

Magic Leap raises $461 million in fresh funding from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlQCU3N3q9B2_5vWJcvwiApFvioUIDX19D6TkjOLL8bQUbXAlMMGzXe0m48Xv4ebrKCUgVytw4Yub66D9oIxetUlOCdSsewS00ByiW_htUi88R1VvysBr1jNfWEbpWTi6lArTO6eeQKw/s1600/magic-leap-one.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="810" data-original-width="1372" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDlQCU3N3q9B2_5vWJcvwiApFvioUIDX19D6TkjOLL8bQUbXAlMMGzXe0m48Xv4ebrKCUgVytw4Yub66D9oIxetUlOCdSsewS00ByiW_htUi88R1VvysBr1jNfWEbpWTi6lArTO6eeQKw/s640/magic-leap-one.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> Magic Leap still hasn’t released a product, but they’re continuing to raise a lot of cash to get there. The Plantation, Florida-based augmented reality startup announced today that it has raised $461 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign investment arm, The Public Investment Fund. The Saudi Arabian fund contributed $400 million of the raise, with “new investors” fronting the rest, the company said.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZbanqTd7PL27xqgtEdhksXWxD8-V8ue-y1hyphenhyphen5p56L11z1WeWvL-3c0F4su7rsjy-ewaK3ptNsNoqqrbphpcw4dErMpk86G2ghUCZ-38ULGSAWaWbp2ehp9PLbNsOvdLlxGWTNix-Fdc/s1600/magic-leap1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1000" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqZbanqTd7PL27xqgtEdhksXWxD8-V8ue-y1hyphenhyphen5p56L11z1WeWvL-3c0F4su7rsjy-ewaK3ptNsNoqqrbphpcw4dErMpk86G2ghUCZ-38ULGSAWaWbp2ehp9PLbNsOvdLlxGWTNix-Fdc/s640/magic-leap1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> The additional Series D funding comes after Magic Leap confirmed a $502 million funding round led by Temasek in October. The total Series D funding now stands at $963 million, the company says.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <b>Magic Leap has raised more than $2.3 billion in funding to date.</b></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <b><br /></b></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> “The Magic Leap team and I are happy to welcome The Public Investment Fund and the other new investors to the Magic Leap family. We look forward to having them join us on our journey to build an amazing future,” CEO Rony Abovitz said in a statement.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> Okay, now, why the heck does Magic Leap need so much money? Well, that’s a question people have been asking for quite a while, but the gist boils down to the fact that they’re trying to do it all.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh05utX7uXUrhlg2v5yCyHaPw_pMmO2zr00nntAPDyZ1luFH5261IgCj7PXLxGVnMJy1cBCWjzs72wTkiBEHMBnocP2NzFtticzD2XZOsIeyTOOjp5cuHcPxZxoADZMSbsf9IiK2Tuu04A/s1600/Magic-Leap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh05utX7uXUrhlg2v5yCyHaPw_pMmO2zr00nntAPDyZ1luFH5261IgCj7PXLxGVnMJy1cBCWjzs72wTkiBEHMBnocP2NzFtticzD2XZOsIeyTOOjp5cuHcPxZxoADZMSbsf9IiK2Tuu04A/s640/Magic-Leap.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> A lot of the hardware they’ve been trying to create hasn’t been built before, so they’ve focused a lot of resources on looking to develop new display technologies and develop sensor suites that can map environments quickly and efficiently. They’re also building their own operating system and courting developers to build specifically for their platform, a system that will have few parallels and require some unique thinking on the part of those building for it.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> The approach to mastering it all at the same time has meant a lot of delays for the startup, but the constant stream of high-profile investors have also given Magic Leap easy access to capital as they’ve continued to raise and raise without having shipped a single headset. The company’s Magic Leap One “Creator Edition” is supposedly going to see a 2018 release, but there are still plenty of unanswered questions that the company has yet to publicly acknowledge.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div align="center"> <iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XAzsblOH83s" width="560"></iframe> </div> <br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> </div>

Magic Leap raises $461 million in fresh funding from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Magic Leap still hasn’t released a product, but they’re continuing to raise a lot of cash to get there. The Plantation, Florida-based ...

Read more »