Azure Speech AI service Custom Commands Alternative

Question

Hi, we are looking forward to using Azure AI services especially the speech service to build a bot that does certain tasks based on speech for example if we ask the bot to "Make a reservation for Instrument A from 9 AM to 10 AM" then the bot should get the input like Instrument A, 9 am and 10 am and internally call API to make the booking.

We came across the custom commands options but only to find out that you are no longer allowed to create any projects for custom commands and that it is retiring. Are there any alternative speech services that can help us to achieve our goal?

Answer 1

Hi @Varun Surana, thanks for posting in the Microsoft Q and A. You're correct, Azure Speech Services Custom Commands feature is being retired. However, you can still achieve similar functionality using other Azure services and third-party alternatives. One such option is to utilize the combination of Azure's Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) and Speech-to-Text capabilities. With LUIS, you can train a custom language understanding model to recognize intents (e.g., "MakeReservation") and entities (e.g., "Instrument A", "9 AM", "10 AM"). By integrating Speech-to-Text, you can convert spoken commands into text, which can then be fed into LUIS for intent and entity recognition. This enables you to extract the reservation details and call your API to make the booking. If you found this solution useful, consider accepting it.