{"signal_id":"b7e3a1c2-8f45-5d6e-9a02-1c4f7b2e9d10","signal_type":"patents","signal_subtype":"patentGrant","association":"company","detected_at":"2026-09-01T00:00:00Z","company":{"name":"International Business Machines Corporation","domain":"ibm.com"},"contact":null,"data":{"summary":"IBM was granted a US patent for coordinating a large language model with a conversational agent to detect and repair broken conversations.","detail":"US Patent 12,725,646 describes a system that monitors a live dialogue, detects when a conversational agent has misunderstood the user, and invokes a large language model to rewrite the exchange and recover — cutting hand-offs to human support.","patent_number":"US12725646","patent_title":"Coordinating a conversational agent with a large language model for conversation repair","patent_abstract":"Techniques for coordinating a conversational agent with a large language model, wherein a breakdown in a dialogue is detected and a repair utterance generated by the large language model is surfaced through the conversational agent.","invention_explanation":"A method for pairing an LLM with an existing chatbot so that, when the bot mishandles a turn, the LLM steps in and repairs the conversation in real time.","grant_date":"2026-09-01","event_kind":"grant_date","event_at":"2026-09-01","uspto_assignee":"INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION","cpc_primary":{"code":"G06F40/35","label":"Natural language processing — dialogue / conversational agents"},"cpc":[{"code":"G06F40/35","label":"Natural language processing — dialogue systems"},{"code":"G06N3/08","label":"Neural networks — learning methods"},{"code":"G06N20/00","label":"Machine learning"},{"code":"G10L15/22","label":"Speech recognition — dialogue management"},{"code":"G06F40/40","label":"Natural language — semantic analysis"}],"tech_area":"artificial intelligence / machine learning","technologies_mentioned":["large language models","conversational agents","dialogue repair"],"tags":["ai-ml","nlp","llm","customer-support"],"inventors":[{"name":"Priya Raghavan","sequence":1,"is_primary":true},{"name":"Daniel Okafor","sequence":2,"is_primary":false},{"name":"Wei Zhang","sequence":3,"is_primary":false},{"name":"Sofia Marchetti","sequence":4,"is_primary":false},{"name":"James Whitfield","sequence":5,"is_primary":false},{"name":"Aiko Tanaka","sequence":6,"is_primary":false},{"name":"Rahul Menon","sequence":7,"is_primary":false},{"name":"Elena Petrova","sequence":8,"is_primary":false}],"precision_class":"exact","source_url":"https://patents.google.com/patent/US12725646"}}
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