Init.ai: Simplest way to build intelligent conversational apps.

This is the 2nd launch from Init.ai. View more

Init.ai

Build powerful and intelligent conversational apps 💁🤖

Create AI and natural language conversational apps through our developer platform. We offer a comprehensive solution that handles messaging, machine learning, and business logic, including integration with third-party APIs. You can suggest responses and update agent workflows in real time as well as automate many conversations.

Launch tags:

Robots•Developer Tools•Artificial Intelligence

Launch Team

Keith Brisson

Init.ai

Maker

Hello Product Hunters! We’re quite psyched to launch today here. We’re Init.ai (Techstars Boulder 2016), a simple-to-use platform that makes building intelligent conversational apps easy. We want companies and brands to go beyond the limits of chatbots. With our platform, they can engage their users naturally. Developers can build apps that would be up and running in less than hour. You can start building your conversation apps right now — try it yourself, free!

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8yr ago

Mike Gozzo

Zendesk

I've been working with @keithbrisson and @adawoodi as they took the first steps in building init.ai's messaging connectivity with Smooch. At every turn, I've been impressed by their technical prowess and the potential of their platform as one of the first "next-generation" conversational experience builders. This tool may not be your best choice if you want to create a relatively simple bot experience based on keywords, however it's a great way to build, train and maintain a more sophisticated conversational experience - particularly if you are a developer that wants to shift into high gear and really control your outcome. @keithbrisson - can you tell us more about the insights that are behind your unique approach? How does init make bot building better?

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8yr ago

Keith Brisson

Init.ai

Maker

Hi @gozmike, thanks so much for the kind words and question. We're providing developers the tools to make great conversation experiences that add real value to the companies they work for. We think we're just at the start of this great shift towards chat and natural language conversation, and we want to power it now and into the future. To make that happen, we started with the basics. We built a unique, conversational NLP system that works with messages in sequences instead of isolation, to better understand context and meaning. In end-user trials, people always wanted to go beyond questions and answers to a back-and-forth interaction. That's what we ultimately want to enable. And then we built all the tools that make training such as system possible. The machine learning underneath is sophisticated, and always changing as new techniques come out, but we abstract it away into simple developer tools to let companies focus on their core business, not arcane technology. Finally, we see conversational interactions emerging everywhere--from messaging apps to wearables to IoT--so we enable these applications to be built once and deployed everywhere.

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8yr ago

Michael

DoseNYC

Keith, this is awesome! I love how dev-friendly Initai is. I've been frustrated with the "drag-and-drop" bot builders out there that output mediocre experiences. One question - is it possible to integrate Initai with a database? Having access to user metadata and message logs is essential to anyone building bots with serious applications.

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8yr ago

Keith Brisson

Init.ai

Maker

@mishalaskin totally! Init.ai supports a few things on that front. Theres a built-in key-value store where you can store arbitrary data as a conversation progresses. This data can be stored both at the conversation level and at the user level. Since Init.ai lets you run custom code, you also have the flexibility to connect to any existing database, service, or a hosted API like Firebase or the AWS suite. We have a few things in the works as well: we are opening up a REST API soon for even more flexibility and will be enabling self-hosted logic (so you can use whatever database and programming language you'd like directly) as well. For message logs, there's a full debugger which shows you the conversation and how it was processed, and those logs can be exported for re-training. Plus, you can get messages in realtime through webhooks.

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8yr ago

Michael

DoseNYC

@keithbrisson very useful, thank you

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8yr ago