Building Conversational AI Systems

Chapter Overview

Conversational AI is arguably the most visible application of large language models. From customer support chatbots to AI companions, creative writing partners, and voice assistants, the ability to sustain coherent, context-aware, multi-turn dialogue is central to how people interact with language models in practice. Building great conversational systems requires far more than calling an API; it demands careful architectural decisions about dialogue state, memory, persona consistency, and graceful handling of conversation breakdowns.

This module covers the complete stack for building conversational AI. It begins with dialogue system architecture, contrasting task-oriented, open-domain, and hybrid approaches. It then explores persona design for companionship and creative writing applications, followed by memory and context management techniques that allow conversations to span sessions and retain important information over time. The module also addresses multi-turn dialogue patterns including clarification, correction, topic switching, and fallback strategies. Finally, it covers voice and multimodal interfaces that bring conversational AI beyond text.

By the end of this module, you will be able to design dialogue architectures for different use cases, implement persistent memory systems, build persona-consistent chatbots, manage complex multi-turn conversation flows, and integrate speech and vision capabilities into conversational applications.