Relief is on the way for your busy days, or for those who absolutely hate wasting time on the telephone. Imagine scheduling appointments, making reservations at restaurants, and conducting all of the time-stealing tasks throughout the day that keep you on hold without ever picking up the phone or even sitting down to type out a text or email. How is this possible? This ultra convenience is being developed with new technology, called Google Duplex, that is coursing excitement through amazed onlookers and taking the concept of Alexa to a whole new level, and freshly just announced at Google I/O 2018.
Google I/O is an annual conference presented by Google. It is intended mainly for developers, but savvy observers realize that it’s also when Google makes some big product announcements. This year, CEO Sundar Pichai amazed the audience when he demonstrated the innovation of Google Duplex by showing off actual conversations that had the technology make phone calls, schedule an appointment for a hairdresser, and even inserted a personalized, “mmhmm” to the conversation. By the end of the phone call, Google Duplex had successfully scheduled an appointment for a haircut as the ultimate assistant without the hairdresser at the salon realizing she was speaking to AI technology in place of a live person.
Pichai explained how this interactive technology that not only routinely and remotely goes through the steps of a process that has been programmed into a computer chip, but actually picks up on the nuance of the conversation to the point of redirecting its response when the conversation takes unexpected turns. He further demonstrated an example of having Google Duplex call a restaurant to make a reservation, and the person on the other end of the phone presented confusing information. This new technology didn’t miss a beat, even responding with a casual, “Gotcha, yes!”
Keep your eyes and ears out for this advancement in the ultimate assistant to be rolled out for you to use after testing and complex training is complete. Testing for Google Duplex is expected to take place this summer. Listen to the live conversations and learn more about this new technology on Google’s published blog post. Google hopes that it will not only be a virtual assistant that interacts and responds like a real human voice but also for it to be able to automatically and immediately update information on sitemap searches such as holiday hours.
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