Applied artificial intelligence technology for natural language generation using a graph data structure with follow-up capabilities

A natural language generation (NLG) method that applies artificial intelligence to structured data to determine content to be expressed in natural language narratives that describe the structured data, the method comprising:

• a processor accessing a graph data structure in memory, wherein the graph data structure comprises a plurality of nodes, wherein each of a plurality of the nodes (1) represents a corresponding intent so that a plurality of different nodes represent different corresponding intents and (2) is associated with one or more links to one or more of the nodes to define relationships among the intents;
• the processor traversing the graph data structure to determine which of the nodes to use for content to be expressed in the natural language narratives;
• and
• the processor determining which of the nodes to use for providing follow-up information about the natural language narratives based on the links of the graph data structure so that the follow-up information is derived from nodes that are linked to the nodes used for the content to be expressed in the natural language narrative.

An article of manufacture for natural language generation (NLG) that applies artificial intelligence to structured data to determine content to be expressed in natural language narratives that describe the structured data, the article of manufacture comprising:

• machine-readable code that is resident on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, wherein the code is executable by a processor to cause the processor to:
• access a graph data structure in memory, wherein the graph data structure comprises a plurality of nodes, wherein each of a plurality of the nodes (1) represents a corresponding intent so that a plurality of different nodes represent different corresponding intents and (2) is associated with one or more links to one or more of the nodes to define relationships among the intents;
• traverse the graph data structure to determine which of the nodes to use for content to be expressed in the natural language narratives;
• and
• determine which of the nodes to use for providing follow-up information about the natural language narratives based on the links of the graph data structure so that the follow-up information is derived from nodes that are linked to the nodes used for the content to be expressed in the natural language narrative.