MENLO PARK — On April 29, 2020, Facebook AI introduced BlenderBot, the most advanced open-domain chatbot ever created, and open-sourced it to the AI research community. BlenderBot stands out for blending a range of conversational skills such as empathy, knowledge, and personality, making it more engaging and human-like than any other chatbot, according to human evaluators.
This breakthrough results from years of research and development in conversational AI. TheS chatbot features a cutting-edge design, incorporating improved decoding techniques and a massive neural network model with 9.4 billion parameters, 3.6 times larger than previous systems. With this new model, BlenderBot delivers natural, dynamic conversations across a variety of topics.
The complete BlenderBot model, code, and evaluation setup have been released to enable AI researchers worldwide to reproduce and further advance this work. The chatbot has demonstrated impressive human-like qualities in conversational tasks and outperforms others in both engagement and fluency.
In creating BlenderBot, Facebook AI employed innovative techniques such as large-scale neural network training, blending multiple conversational skills, and refining generation strategies to deliver more engaging and varied responses. The new model excels in making conversations feel natural, even across longer exchanges, by incorporating well-tuned decoding techniques like beam search.
Looking ahead, Facebook AI aims to continue improving conversational models, addressing challenges such as longer conversation quality and reducing harmful language. By sharing their work through open-source platforms, Facebook AI hopes to enable the broader research community to push the boundaries of conversational AI.