Google Home, which implements Google Assistant, could soon be used to make autonomous phone calls. unsplash.com.
From May 8-10, Google hosted its annual Google I/O, a developer festival, in Mountain View, California. Each year, this event features in-depth sessions aimed at building web, mobile, and business applications with Google. This year’s festival introduced a new Android operating system dubbed “Android P,” new features in Gmail, and the pairing of Augmented Reality and Google Maps. However, Google’s new Duplex system, which will be incorporated into Google Assistant, stole the show.
During the conference, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai exhibited Google Duplex’s capacity by playing a recording of Google Assistant responding to the prompt: “Make me an appointment on Tuesday morning anytime between 10 to 12.” The Assistant responded by making a call to a hair salon and carrying a conversation without giving the other end any idea that an AI was calling them.
A second call was made to a restaurant in order to reserve seats for four. Although the recipient of the call had a slight accent, Duplex was still able to make out key details in throughout the talk and even knew to ask for the waiting time when told that the restaurant only reserved for upwards of five people.
Pichai says the Assistant can react intelligently when a conversation doesn’t go as anticipated and veers off course from the given objective, as it did in the second phone call. In the case where it can’t interpret the information, however, a Google blog stated that it would ask for a human operator to take over and complete the task.
Despite Duplex’s adeptness at handling both phone calls, Google claims that the software is still under heavy development. They plan to start testing Duplex inside of the Assistant in early summer so users can begin to make calls for restaurant reservations, hair salon appointments, holiday hours. Although the full implementation of the program seems like something in the distant future, the idea of having a personal assistant that makes automated calls is something to look forwards to.
