Google LLC today offered up a cloud service that companies can use to build digital helpers similar to its own Google Assistant.

Google said its Dialogflow Enterprise service, which has been in beta since November, is now generally available. The service, based on technology the company acquired when it bought a startup called API.AI Inc. in 2016, can be used to create a virtual assistant without needing to create any machine learning models first.

Dialogflow Enterprise can do this because Google has already pretrained the natural language and machine learning models it needs. These algorithms help interpret people’s questions, and the service can also carry out numerous actions such as placing an order or putting customers through to a human agent.

In a blog post, Google Cloud AI product manager Dan Aharon said Dialogflow has already been used by “hundreds of thousands” of developers to create voice- and text-based conversational experiences for platforms that included Google Assistant and Facebook Messenger.

Aharon also mentioned some of the improvements made since Dialogflow first went into beta. “Starting today, you can combine batch operations that would have required multiple API calls into a single API call, reducing lines of code and shortening development time,” Aharon said. Dialogflow has also gained support for additional languages including Danish, Hindi and Thai.

One of Dialogflow’s earliest adopters is a parcel delivery company called DPDgroup International Services GmbH & Co., which used to get a conversational interface for its customers up and running a year earlier than it planned. “Dialogflow made it easy to build a AI-powered conversational experience that delights consumers using the resources and skill sets we already have,” said DPD Product Innovation Manager Max Glaisher.

The announcement follows two recent artificial-intelligence-based updates to its Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech language processing services.

Image: Google