Google’s advanced voice AI Duplex can now schedule restaurant appointments and reservations for virtually anywhere in the United States.

At Google I / O 2018, Duplex caused applause: Google’s new AI voice automatically booked a spot in a restaurant over the phone. Artificial speech synthesis is difficult to distinguish from the human voice.

Since Fall 2018, Google Duplex has been gradually implemented in the USA and the application scenarios are developing further. Among other things, it is now also possible to make a reservation at the restaurant Book appointments at the hairdresser.

The program is directly integrated into the Google Assistant: to start a duplex call, all you need is a simple voice command, for example, favorite restaurant, day, time and number of people. Then the call begins and informs Duplex whether the table has been successfully booked or not.

Google also uses Duplex for Automatically update company web profiles: Amnesty International contacts the company, asking for opening times, for example, and can use the answer to update the company profile on Google Maps or in the search function.

Stores and restaurants usually have to do this work manually – if they even know their company is listed on Google with opening times. In addition to the USA, two-sided auto-update calls are available in Canada, India, Japan, Spain, and others. Germany is not on the list.

Dual calls (almost) across the USA

About three years after it was first introduced, it is now Duplex Available in 49 countries. The exception is Louisiana, with Google citing local laws as an obstacle. It may not be the right solution in sight.

In general, domestic laws are said to have been crucial to the fact that the US rollout of duplexing happened slowly. Google is said to have added certain functions from time to time, such as the callback number for companies that Duplex contacted.

Duplex’s complex localization with regard to laws but also linguistic and cultural characteristics should stand in the way of Duplex’s international swift launch.

The biggest legal hurdle is likely to be the declaration of consent of the caller, whose voice data must be processed in order for the Google Cloud AI conversation. The US version of Duplex solves this problem with a counter note at the start of the call and optional call detail.

In order to generate more voice data for AI training, Google has left about a quarter of duplex calls in the past Made by people. Since October 2020, 99 percent of duplex calls have to be made by the device. According to Google, humans had to capture about 19 percent of all calls made in 2019, as AI reached the limits of speech comprehension.

Inflated: Android PoliceAnd the edge

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Google Duplex: Voice AI is available almost everywhere in the United States Last update: April 2, 2021 by Matthias Bastian