X

Microsoft's acquisition of Semantic Machines is all about AI

Semantic Machines focuses on conversational artificial intelligence, which is all the rage for digital voice assistants and social chatbots.

Mark Serrels Editorial Director
Mark Serrels is an award-winning Senior Editorial Director focused on all things culture. He covers TV, movies, anime, video games and whatever weird things are happening on the internet. He especially likes to write about the hardships of being a parent in the age of memes, Minecraft and Fortnite. Definitely don't follow him on Twitter.
Mark Serrels
Logos Of corporation In Munich
NurPhoto

Considering its work with Cortana, Microsoft's acquisition of Semantic Machines makes perfect sense.

Announced Sunday, the purchase is designed to bolster not just Microsoft digital voice assistant Cortana but also social chatbots like XiaoIce, which has had up to 30 billion conversations across China, Japan, the United States, India and Indonesia.

Berkeley, California-based Semantic Machines describes itself as developing the fundamental technology to allow humans to interact naturally with computers. It's led by tech entrepreneur Dan Roth, UC-Berkeley Professor Dan Klein and Stanford University Professor Percy Liang.

"With the acquisition of Semantic Machines, we will establish a conversational AI center of excellence in Berkeley to push forward the boundaries of what is possible in language interfaces," said David Ku, chief technology officer of Microsoft AI & Research. "Combining Semantic Machines' technology with Microsoft's own AI advances, we aim to deliver powerful, natural and more productive user experiences that will take conversational computing to a new level."

'Hello, humans': Google's Duplex could make Assistant the most lifelike AI yet.

Cambridge Analytica: Everything you need to know about Facebook's data mining scandal.