Patent ID: 10599644

Abstract:
A method for answering a natural-language user query includes receiving a query from a user by a central agent, parsing the query, and determining if an answer is known to the central agent as being within a local database. If the answer is known, the query is answered with a known natural-language answer using the local database. If not, artificial conversational entity (ACE) invocation is performed. The ACE invocation includes determining a topical field for the query, determining an ACE, of a plurality of ACEs, to send the query to, based on the topical field, and sending the query to the ACE. If the ACE is capable of answering, a natural-language answer is received from the ACE and presented to the user. If not, a natural-language answer is created using social knowledge and presented to the user. Social knowledge includes data crawled from subscriber-provided content of social media services.