This workshop is for anyone who wants to get a deeper understanding of the technologies that underpin conversational systems such as chatbots, voice assistants, smart speakers and automated response systems such as email handlers. Attendees will get a broad understanding of all of the technologies that are available and the state of the art in how they fit together and are used. Areas covered will be: speech to text, text to speech, biometrics, topic spotting, language understanding, emotion detection and dialog management. By the end of the class you should appreciate how AI technologies such as neural nets are used to create conversational interfaces and why conversational design is still a mixture of art and science.