Google has revealed a robo-caller that sounds just like human earlier this month and named it Duplex. Google Duplex is a robo assistant that can make calls in the background to set up a salon appointment or a restaurant reservation for you by calling those places, chatting with a human and getting the job done. At the Google I/O developer conference, company CEO Sundar Pichai explained how its Google Duplex technology can help Android users make an appointment.
The unveiling of Duplex and Google Assistant’s capabilities captured the imagination and also walked the line of being creepy. Chatting with a bot via text is one thing. Having a computer make calls for you is a whole new deal.
Around 60 percent of U.S. businesses don’t have online booking systems, according to Google. It’s been working on a way for users to give a time and date to Google Assistant, which can then make the call and set up an appointment. “It brings together all our investments over the years in natural language understanding, deep learning, text to speech,” said Pichai.
Duplex is an extension of the company’s voice-based digital assistant that automatically phones local businesses and speaks with workers there to book appointments. Google introduced Duplex earlier this month at its I/O developer conference, playing several clips of its assistant booking a hair cut and a restaurant table with impressively casual speech. Lets watch the demo in the video down below.
What you just saw is called Duplex, cutting edge technology Google said it will be releasing this summer.
Duplex really feels like next-level AI stuff, but Google’s chief executive said it’s still very much under development. Google plans to conduct early testing of Duplex inside Assistant this summer “to help users make restaurant reservations, schedule hair salon appointments, and get holiday hours over the phone.” There are ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’, and pauses and emphasis in the voice. The humans on the other end of the interaction thought nothing of having the conversation required to schedule an appointment for a haircut. Now these are some questions that you may wanna ask after watching above demo.