Beginner · NLP

Utterance

Visual diagram · (in preparation) · Math · (in preparation) · Worked example · 3 difficulty levels.

TL;DR. A complete unit of spoken or written language from a user, representing a single turn in a conversation.

Technical Definition

A complete unit of spoken or written language from a user, representing a single turn in a conversation.

How it works

In the context of conversational AI, an utterance is the input provided by the user that the system needs to process. It can be a single word, a phrase, or a full sentence. AI models like NLU then analyze this utterance to identify intents and entities, driving the system's response.

Related Concepts

• Natural Language Understanding (NLU) — The ability of a computer program to understand human language as it is spoken or written.
• Intent Recognition — Identifying the underlying purpose or goal of a user's natural language input.