Smart FAQ Chatbot AI Agent

Applied Artificial Intelligence Project

---

Project Overview

This project implements a retrieval-based AI chatbot designed to automate Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) support.
Unlike generative models (such as GPT), this agent relies on TF-IDF (Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency) and Cosine Similarity to accurately map user queries to a predefined knowledge base, ensuring factual, consistent, and deterministic responses.

The system also includes a hybrid engine capable of handling both technical queries and small talk, resulting in a more natural user experience.

---

Objectives

• Intelligent Retrieval
  Implement TF-IDF vectorization to convert text into numerical representations.

• Similarity Matching
  Use Cosine Similarity to identify the closest matching FAQ entry.

• Hybrid Response System
  Combine:

  • Machine Learning–based retrieval for FAQs
  • Rule-based logic for greetings and small talk

• Performance Analytics
  Visualize chatbot accuracy and confidence scores using Matplotlib and Seaborn.

• Threshold Gating
  Apply a confidence threshold (e.g., < 50%) to gracefully handle unknown or irrelevant queries.

---

Technologies Used

• Language: Python
• NLP & Machine Learning:
  • scikit-learn (TfidfVectorizer, cosine_similarity)
  • re (Regular Expressions)
• Data Processing: numpy
• Visualization: matplotlib, seaborn

---

How It Works

1. Preprocessing

   • User input is cleaned (lowercased, special characters removed).

2. Vectorization

   • User queries and the FAQ knowledge base are converted into TF-IDF vectors.

3. Similarity Calculation

   • Cosine similarity is computed between the user query and all stored FAQs.

4. Response Selection

   • If a small talk pattern is detected (e.g., "Hi", "Bye"), the chatbot responds immediately.
   • Otherwise, the FAQ with the highest similarity score is returned.
   • If the highest score falls below the defined threshold, a fallback response is returned:

     "I'm not sure about that..."

---

Usage

Running the Chatbot

# 1 Install dependencies
pip install scikit-learn numpy matplotlib seaborn

# 2 Run the script
python FAQ_AI_Chatbot.py