Intent
The real goal behind a message — what the user actually wants, beyond the words used. "How much is it?", "do you have discounts?" and "is it expensive?" can share the same intent. Reading intent correctly determines whether the assistant answers the question asked or the one missed.
- Appeared
- A central concept in classic chatbots (from ~2016); reinterpreted by LLMs, which infer it without rigid rules.
- Tactics
- In modern assistants, intent is inferred by the model in context, not hardcoded into a decision tree — hence the flexibility on nuanced questions.
Related terms
“Intent” is part of Glossary · AI Chatbot — part of the Atlas, Websem's reference of AI search, marketing and data terms.