What’s Amazon Lex and How Does It Work? [Tutorial]

Amazon Lex is the newest AI innovation from Amazon, and it is designed to provide voice and text conversations to customers and users. From General Electric to Liberty Mutual, many companies are relying on Amazon Lex to help simplify and optimize the customer experience. While Amazon Alexa has been one of the most popular smart speakers, Lex is considered an advanced version that companies can use to their advantage.

Though if you’re not sure if you want to sign up for Amazon Lex, we can show you a full breakdown of Amazon Lex and what may be another viable option if you’re starting out smaller. Here’s everything you need to know about Amazon Lex.

What is Amazon Lex? 

Amazon Lex is a fully managed service that enables companies to build conversational AI systems using text and voice. Lex is powered by the same deep learning technologies that power Alexa, but souped up with natural language understanding (NLU) capabilities to understand and make decisions with a human input. Lex offers a set of quality APIs and tools that allow users to assemble and deploy chatbots for customer service and help desks.

How Amazon Lex Works

Lex works by processing a user’s input through a series of steps to decipher the user’s intent and extract relevant data. This process can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Input Processing: The user’s input is sent to Lex, where Lax analyzes it to recognize the user’s intent.
2. Intent Recognition: Lex uses machine learning algorithms to identify the user’s intent. This allows Lex to respond to the user’s request with an appropriate answer.
3. Fulfillment: After Lex recognizes the intent, Lex can perform the necessary actions to fulfill the user’s request. Usually, Lex will get assistance from a database, knowledge base, or API.
4. Response Generation: Lex generates a response to the user depending on the outcome of the fulfillment step. Depending on the settings or capabilities, Lex will respond by voice or text.

Benefits of Amazon Lex

There are several benefits to using Amazon Lex for building conversational interfaces. They are as follows:

• Advanced NLU: Lex provides NLU capabilities that allow it to understand the user’s intent and extract information from it.
• Easy Integrations: Lex offers a wide array of APIs and tools that make it easy to integrate with other AWS services, as well as third-party applications and services.
• Scalability: Lex can scale as companies grow to handle large volumes and requests, keeping up with high customer volumes and demands.
• Customization: Lex can be fully customized with a company’s vision, including modifying intents, knowledge, and other factors.

Amazon Lex Pricing

Pricing for Amazon Lex is based on a pay-per-use model. There’s no upfront costs or minimum involved. For the most accurate and up-to-date pricing, refer to the Amazon Lex pricing page.

How to Build a Chatbot with Amazon Lex

Building an Amazon Lex chatbot is done entirely through the AWS Management Console. Here’s how to build a Lex chatbot:

1. Log into the AWS Management Console.
2. Go to the Amazon Lex section and click on “Create Bot”.
3. Name your bot and toggle voice and/or text functionality.
4. Create intents by defining actions that users can take. For each intent, specify utterances, also known as user phrases.
5. Create slots or variables to capture specific information.
6. Define the possible values for each slot. You can either create custom slots or choose a built-in slot.
7. Determine how the bot will respond to user requests.
8. For complex logic, use Lambda functions.
9. If necessary, enable Lex’s built-in responses for quick answers.
10. Test your chatbot out.
11. Identify errors or problems.
12. Reefune slots, intents, and utterances accordingly.
13. Deploy your Lex bot.

For more detailed directions, click here to get started on a bot after you set up your AWS account.

Top 3Amazon Lex Alternatives

In the conversational AI space, Amazon Lex heavily competes with other companies to provide conversational AI services to clients. These companies include:

• Voiceflow: An easy-to-use chatbot builder with no-coding expertise required and built-in ChatGPT.
• Rasa: An open-source AI framework that offers advanced NLU capabilities and customization options  — recommended for experienced developers.
• Google Dialogflow: A conversational AI platform that seamlessly integrates with other Google web services such as Docs and Drive.

The Easiest Way to Build a Chatbot

While Amazon Lex is a powerful tool for building chatbots, it can be complex and time-consuming to use. For developers who want a simpler and more intuitive way to build chatbots, Voiceflow is an excellent option. 

Voiceflow is a no-code platform that allows developers to build chatbots using a visual interface, without the need for coding or scripting. With Voiceflow, developers can easily create chatbots for various applications such as customer service, technical support, and more. The platform offers a wide range of features and tools, including advanced NLU capabilities, integration with various platforms and services, and customization options.

Sign up with Voiceflow today and jump start your chatbot with a Voiceflow template!