Amazon Lex – Now Generally Available

During AWS re:Invent I showed you how you could use Amazon Lex to build conversational voice & text interfaces. At that time we launched Amazon Lex in preview form and invited developers to sign up for access. Powered by the same deep learning technologies that drive Amazon Alexa, Amazon Lex allows you to build web & mobile applications that support engaging, lifelike interactions.

Today I am happy to announce that we are making Amazon Lex generally available, and that you can start using it today! Here are some of the features that we added during the preview:

Slack Integration – You can now create Amazon Lex bots that respond to messages and events sent to a Slack channel. Click on the Channels tab of your bot, select Slack, and fill in the form to get a callback URL for use with Slack:

Follow the tutorial (Integrating an Amazon Lex Bot with Slack) to see how to do this yourself.

Twilio Integration – You can now create Amazon Lex bots that respond to SMS messages sent to a Twilio SMS number. Again, you simply click on Channels, select Twilio, and fill in the form:

To learn more, read Integrating an Amazon Lex Bot with Twilio SMS.

SDK Support – You can now use the AWS SDKs to build iOS, Android, Java, JavaScript, Python, .Net, Ruby, PHP, Go, and C++ bots that span mobile, web, desktop, and IoT platforms and interact using either text or speech. The SDKs also support the build process for bots; you can programmatically add sample utterances, create slots, add slot values, and so forth. You can also manage the entire build, test, and deployment process programmatically.

Voice Input on Test Console – The Amazon Lex test console now supports voice input when used on the Chrome browser. Simply click on the microphone:

Utterance Monitoring – Amazon Lex now records utterances that were not recognized by your bot, otherwise known as missed utterances. You can review the list and add the relevant ones to your bot:

You can also watch the following CloudWatch metrics to get a better sense of how your users are interacting with your bot. Over time, as you add additional utterances and improve your bot in other ways, the metrics should be on the decline.

• Text Missed Utterances (PostText)
• Text Missed Utterances (PostContent)
• Speech Missed Utterances

Easy Association of Slots with Utterances – You can now highlight text in the sample utterances in order to identify slots and add values to slot types:

Improved IAM Support – Amazon Lex permissions are now configured automatically from the console; you can now create bots without having to create your own policies.

Preview Response Cards – You can now view a preview of the response cards in the console:

To learn more, read about Using a Response Card.

Go For It
Pricing is based on the number of text and voice responses processed by your application; see the Amazon Lex Pricing page for more info.

I am really looking forward to seeing some awesome bots in action! Build something cool and let me know what you come up with.

— Jeff;