A Deep Look Into Duplex, Google’s Smart New Service
We were in awe, and we felt that we are now living in the future we alone dreamt of. Seeing a virtual assistant making a phone call and talking to an actual human being surprised all of us. Google recently released a new video too, that show the assistant at work in real life. But. is this truly how the Google Assistant is going to work? And also, what about privacy?
Well, these questions sure raise a few eyebrows. And Google has also decided to answer them.
Google went ahead and organized a presentation for journalists on how this system is actually going to work.
So, how about a recap first? Well, Duplex is a new service from Google that does the work of a human for a human. For example, it can make reservations and bookings for you by directly calling the restaurant. The most amazing part?
It can do all this in a very human voice with human voice tones and modulations. The service identifies itself as a Google Assistant at first and then proceeds with the conversation. If that introduction were not there, one won’t believe that it is a robot talking.
Duplex also represents a rare and early look into an ongoing project from a company that is really careful with secrets. For the first in a very long time, Google is actually opening up and showing journalists and developers on the possibilities of this service.
Useful
Google feels that this service is going to help both people and businesses and that taking a low and measured approach is going to help the company in learning on how the service can assist and help people more and more. And after all, considering that it is artificial intelligence, that is needed.
Among the various reasons why Duplex is very well looked forward to are vocal breaks or “speech disfluencies”. So what this basically means is that in linguistics, we tend to make some breaks and voices that is a very normal and frequent part of speech. And Duplex is capable of doing that, as was shown in the keynote presentation.
During the presentation that Google conducted for journalists, the restaurants were informed after the calls that the calls were by the Assistant, and this thus reaffirmed the fact that the Assistant is indeed capable of pulling off the conversation without any hiccups.
Though this is a very exciting service, this would actually be legal in various states in the U.S due to the “two-party consent” to record a particular voice call. And being Google, the voice call would obviously be recorded.
Formalities
There are also many legal formalities that can also evolve to problems, too. And Google wants that to be taken care of. Google is looking forward to working with the laws and make it acceptable for interstate calls to be made too.
And talking about legal issues, Google wants privacy to be covered too. Google wants transparency to have an upper hand regarding this service. The service has been designed with disclosure built in, and before every call, the system will be appropriately identified.
And while participants and journalists at the event tried their best to throw off the service with complicated answers and questions, the Assistant always came through. And that is the best thing about the Assistant and Duplex. The service is very well built.
Now with technology covered, Google would be looking into legal affairs and would be setting it right soon to get the Duplex service up and running.
