INFORMATION PROCESSING APPARATUS AND INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD

Automatic expansion of a knowledge information dictionary for speech semantic analysis and generation of responses for a dialogue agent are performed in a favorable manner. Category tags are assigned to each term in input speech for all categories when terms are registered in the knowledge information dictionary. A domain of speech content intended by the input speech is estimated, and terms pertaining to the estimated domain are extracted from the input speech as a phrase of a predetermined entity. A response is generated on the basis of the domain of the speech content intended by the input speech and the phrase of the predetermined entity. When a category tag is not assigned to the phrase of a predetermined entity, the phrase of the predetermined entity is registered for the category corresponding to the predetermined entity in the knowledge information dictionary. The knowledge information dictionary has a hierarchical structure, and the application unit generates the response using the hierarchical structure.