A system and method for providing anonymous communications from a user to a called party includes obtaining a dedicated phone number and creating a user account for the user and assigning the dedicated phone number to the user account. A provider account is created for a digital assistant using the dedicated phone number and the digital assistant is preprogrammed with the user account. The digital assistant is also preprogrammed with a skill for recognizing a specific utterance (e.g. Call). Connectivity is provided between the digital assistant and the Internet, for example, using a wireless access point. The digital assistant listens for the specific utterance and, upon recognizing the specific utterance followed by an identification of the called party, the digital assistant initiates a voice call through the Internet to the called party.

Techniques for recommending speechlets to users via voice user interfaces (VUIs) are described. A system may include predetermined rankings of speechlets. The predetermined rankings may be determined offline and may represent reliabilities of the speechlets. During runtime, when the system receives a user input that can be handled by multiple speechlets, the system may determine a type of speechlet configured to handle the user input. The system may also identify information specific to the user's previous interactions with the system. The system may rerank the predetermined rankings using the user specific information, as well as other information. The system may recommend speechlets to the user based on the speechlets' rerankings. The system may first recommend the top reranked speechlet. If the user accepts the recommendation, the system may cause the top reranked speechlet to handle the original user input. If the user declines the recommendation, the system may recommend the next top reranked speechlet to the user. The system may work its way down the rerankings of the speechlets until the user accepts a recommendation, until the system recommends all of the reranked speechlets, or until the user indicates the system should stop recommending speechlets.

The present disclosure relates to a method of a digital assistant device (305) of managing a voice call established between a calling party (300) and a recipient (303), the voice call having been queued to await a response by a human representative (303a) of the recipient (303) of the voice call, and a digital assistant device (305) performing the method. In a first aspect, a method of a digital assistant device (305) of managing a voice call established between a calling party (300) and a recipient (303), the voice call having been queued to await a response by a human representative (303a) of the recipient (303) of the voice call, is provided. The method comprises detecting (S101), from a voice indication of the voice call, information indicating a point in time when the human representative (303a) of the recipient (303) is expected to be able to provide a response to the queued voice call, and setting (S102) the calling party (300) in contact with the recipient (303) at the determined point in time.

A method and apparatus for processing IVR input in a call setup message are provided herein. The method includes receiving at an IVR system a call setup message including information associated with one or more data fields; parsing the information included in the call setup message; and directing the call based on the information included in the call setup message.

Arrangements for automatically detecting bi-directional artificial intelligence (AI) communications and automatically negotiating (i.e., switching to alternative) direct digital communications.

Systems, methods, and devices for establishing communications sessions with contacts are disclosed. In some embodiments, a first request may be received from a first device. The first request may be to communicate with a contact name. A user account associated with the first device may then be identified, and a contact list associated with the user account may be accessed to determine contacts associated with the contact name. Based on the contact list, a first contact and a second contact associated with the contact name may be identified. It may be determined, from memory, that the first contact is a first preferred contact. However, based on an intervening event, the second contact, rather than the preferred contact, may be selected for communicating with the contact.

Methods and systems described in this disclosure receive a request for assistance from a device associated with a user, launch a conversational virtual assistant on the device, determine at least one potential subject of the request based on information associated with the user and a tab or webpage from which the conversational virtual assistant is launched, receive a verification of the subject of the request, create a contact menu with options for receiving the assistance, and receive a selection of one of the options.

Arrangements for automatically detecting bi-directional artificial intelligence (AI) communications and automatically negotiating (i.e., switching to alternative) direct digital communications.

A method for engaging in an automated dialog with a user that includes: retrieving a preset dialog flow that includes various blocks directing the dialog with the user; providing a prompt to the user based on a current block of the dialog flow; receiving an action from the user in response to the prompt; and retrieving a classification tree corresponding to the dialog flow. The classification tree has a plurality of nodes mapped to the blocks of the dialog flow representing user intents. The processor computes a probability for each of the nodes based on the action from the user. A particular one of the nodes is then selected based on the computed probabilities. A target block of the dialog flow is identified based on the selected node, and a response is output in response to the identified target block.

Arrangements for automatically detecting bi-directional artificial intelligence (AI) communications and automatically negotiating (i.e., switching to alternative) direct digital communications.