Technology has given some people a voice, but now Google is ready to let its artificial intelligence do more of the talking.
Google Duplex, a new artificial-intelligence technology announced on Tuesday at Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference, can now call on behalf of a human to schedule an appointment or restaurant reservation. And yes, it's all done while conversing with a real person on the other end of the line.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai played real-life calls using the feature during his presentation. He acknowledged that the tech isn't perfect, but it will still be rolled out in the coming weeks.
"The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments," Yaniv Leviathan, principal engineer, and Yossi Matias, vice president for engineering, said in a blog post. "For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine."
The AI sounds natural, even adding human vocal tics like "um." It can also ask follow-up questions as it works with the human on the other end of the line to schedule an appointment.
"We are working hard to get this right," Pichai said.
