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"Uh," said the female voice. "Can I reserve a table for tomorrow?" The question did not come from a person, but from a software called Duplex developed by Google to make phone calls. Before the end of the year, some users of the company will be able to ask the bot to call restaurants and reading tables on their behalf.
At a demonstration last week, Duplex cleverly addressed the issues of a Google employee playing the role of restaurant worker regarding details such as the size of the party and the name under which the table had to be kept. Then the bot signed with a merry "Ok, great, thank you." Duplex had started the conversation by announcing: "I am Google's automated reservation service, so I will register the call", but the call was barely noticeable.
Google today announced that Duplex mode will be available on the company's Pixel smartphones before the end of the year, in New York, Atlanta, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area. This will be a feature of Google Assistant, the company's rival to Apple's Siri; for now, only restaurants without online booking system, already supported by the wizard, will be called.
The beginnings of Duplex slightly change the functionality of Google Assistant. But this marks another moment in the advancement of artificial intelligence technology in everyday life. Thanks to the investments of Google and its competitors in AI, computers recognize our language and our faces. However, even recent services with names and voices, such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, can not be confused with humans. Software that can pretty much mimic the way people talk and make their own calls, feels … hum … different.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai caused not only wonder but also the alarm when he unveiled Duplex in May during a speech at the company's annual developer conference. He played two recordings in which the bot did not identify himself by calling apparently unintentional staff to make reservations at a hair salon and a restaurant.
A spokesman for Google told WIRED that the company now has a policy of always letting the bot disclose its true nature during calls. Duplex still retains the human voice and "ums", "ahs" and "uh-hmms" which however hit some as scary. Nick Fox, Google Research and Product Design and Product Manager, explains that these interjections are necessary to make Duplex calls shorter and smoother. "The person on the other end of the line should not think about how I am changing my behavior, I should be able to do what I normally do and the system adapts to that," he says. he.
The experience of WIRED writer Lauren Goode, who answered a call from Duplex during a demo last June, shows how bots that look like people can be disoriented. She confused the bot by asking a question about allergies amidst a discussion about the times available for a restaurant reservation. Goode became confused herself when she learned that a second voice called to finalize the derailed transaction was a human worker from the call center, and not another Duplex robot cleaning up.
The term computer originally applied to people who performed calculations manually. Then computers became room filling machines, then the size of a desk, and then a pocket. Now they can sound and converse as people, at least within the confines of a dialogue with a very specific purpose. "It sounds strange because people believe people and machines are different," says Jeff Bigham, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who studies human-machine interactions.
The restaurant staff will be the guinea pig for what happens when this distinction is eroded – at least for certain types of phone calls.
Fox, the Google executive who runs the project, presents Duplex as a win-win. Google users will no longer have to make phone calls to plan their outings. restaurants without an online booking system will win new customers. "These companies are losing because people say," If I can not book this online, I will not book, "he says.
Some people closer to the restaurant industry fear that Duplex may call restaurants also easy for Google users. Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a group of restaurant professionals in the Bay Area, said people could use technology to make multiple bookings and then collapse or call restaurants over and over again .
When Borden spoke with WIRED on Friday afternoon, his organization had no news from Google during its testing with Duplex or its upcoming launch. "If you really believe it will be useful, why not work with us?" Says Borden. A Google spokesman said the company plans to start contacting companies.
Restaurants may refuse to receive Duplex calls by speaking during a call from Duplex or via the website where companies can manage the list information displayed in Google's search and mapping services. When calls are not supported – the overwhelming majority "does not unanimously, the software will alert an operator of a Google Call Center who will take over."
Duplex is not the only Google effort to develop software that speaks on the phone. Earlier this year, the company's cloud division launched tools that help businesses create automated call center software that uses voice synthesis technology similar to that used in Duplex. Google announced today that its assistant would soon be able to filter calls on Pixel phones. If the feature is enabled, callers hear a clearly synthetic voice asking them to describe why they are calling. A live transcription of what the caller says will appear on the phone screen, so the recipient can decide whether he wants to pick up the phone or call back.
Duplex is definitely more ambitious than these other projects. Google plans a quick iteration by monitoring what happens when the bot starts making mass calls. An unresolved question is whether the male or female versions of the tested bot are more effective. If the initial deployment goes well, the hair salons will probably be the next to benefit from the Duplex treatment. Google has also tried to ask the bot to inquire about vacation hours.
Bigham, Carnegie Mellon's professor, and other observers of the Google project say it will probably not be the only one who has longer phone robots. Apple, Amazon and many small businesses have launched their own widely used voice assistants. The impressive speech synthesis technology at work in Duplex is based on openly published research by Google Labs and Alphabet AI.
The tens of millions of automated calls placed every day in the United States suggest that all uses of Duplex technology would not be welcome. Today's automated calls usually only go through a registration; some fraudsters use human resources. Telephone robots that can converse in both directions on a very narrow subject could be both inexpensive and effective. "As this technology improves, it seems quite reasonable that the next guy who calls me to try to convince me to give him my credit card number is not a person. nor a record, it's a rogue Duplex-style agent, "says Bigham.
Roman Yampolskiy, director of the cybersecurity lab at the University of Louisville, hopes that legislation imposing telephone robots to identify might moderate the way companies deploy them. . He also thinks that the harmful uses of such technology are inevitable. "You can use that for sales, you can use it for social engineering attacks," says Yampolskiy, who recently published a book on AI safety. "People will find ways to use this technology that we can never anticipate."
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