Google Duplex: Google Assistant Can Call You in Your Place

Google has announced Google Duplex, a system that allows Google Assistant to have a real conversation to provide concierge services.

Google has unveiled new features it plans to add to its voice assistant, including a standalone mode that will allow him to make phone calls to perform certain tasks in place of a person: book a restaurant, make an appointment at the hairdresser, etc. The first tests are impressive.

You find that Google Assistant is too limited and does not get close enough to a real assistant? The company Mountain View promises to improve at this level and offer a real concierge service, called Google Duplex, able to book an appointment for you.

The day you can ask your smartphone or connected speaker to call for you, to book a restaurant or make an appointment with the hairdresser, is fast approaching. At its annual Google I / O conference, the Internet giant unveiled a new technology that allows a voice assistant to conduct a conversation in natural language with a human interlocutor.

Do you need a new haircut? “ OK Google, find me a hairdresser this Thursday between 10 and 12 hours” could be the only sentence you have to pronounce to reserve a niche. Google Duplex takes care of calling the hairdresser himself to make the request, all with a perfect conversational understanding.

In the examples given during the Google I/O, artificial intelligence dialogue with the hairdresser or restaurant to reserve a niche, confirm some details (number of people, type of cut, precise time …) and finally validate the event will then be confirmed to the user through a notification on his phone.

Everything is shown here with a perfect diction suggesting that all the protagonists are human.

In one sentence on your phone, you have just gained several minutes. In any case in the perfect world where it works without the slightest hitch. And unfortunately, we imagine that this perfect world may be limited to the English language for a while.

To make the voice assistant as natural as possible, Google has worked on intonations and latency in an exchange depending on the circumstances. For example, when the person picks up the phone and says “hello,” the system knows that this greeting needs to be answered quickly because prolonged silence could be interpreted as rudeness. In the same way, if a question is put to him, the machine will be able to mark a time or on the contrary to respond tac tac to the context. Again, the examples provided by Google are bluffing. The California firm will begin testing its technology with Google Assistant starting this summer.

Originally published at Entrepreneur News and Startup Guide.