Google continues to progress on its Duplex, its Artificial Intelligence system capable of imitating the human voice to make calls with an extremely natural voice.
Not without controversy, as people won’t know whether you’re talking to a person or a robot, Google says it’s starting public testing of the software, which was released in May and is designed to make business calls and book appointments.
His plan is to start his public trial with a small group of “trusted testers” and companies that have chosen to receive Duplex calls. Over the next few weeks, the software will only call companies to confirm business and vacation times, such as opening and closing times for the 4th of July (holiday in the US), but it will be just the first step: people will be able to start booking in restaurants and hairdressers within a few weeks.
Last Tuesday Google did some demonstrations of the project but did not allow video recording. The event was also an opportunity for Google to clear up doubts about Duplex, which has been under discussion since Google CEO Sundar Pichai presented the technology at his developer conference.
Unlike the semirobotic voice assistants we hear today, duplex sounds amazingly real, mimicking human speech patterns, using verbal ticks like “uh” and “um”, pausing, lengthening words… it’s not long before a robot will sell us insurance over the phone.