Google Duplex Expands to "Small Group" of Pixel Owners

Google Duplex, the automated service that calls businesses to make bookings on your behalf, received a limited public launch, according to a report VentureBeat. In a statement, Google announced the launch of its "slow deployment" service, which is now available to a "small group" of Google Pixel phone owners in "selected cities". In addition to extending its availability to users, the service may also call restaurants with which Google has not explicitly established a partnership.

As this statement implies, the service was launched in a very limited state, even compared to what Google presented on stage when it announced the service. For the moment, if you can access the service, you will be limited to restaurant reservations (so do not make an appointment for a haircut) and some restaurants will be unavailable for reasons sometimes quite clear. Pixel phones are supported only for the moment, which means that no smart screen or other handset will be used, and Google Assistant will only make calls in English to the cities that Google has specifically selected for # 39; test. It is unclear exactly how long it will take the service to overcome each of these limitations, but since Google is recording all of its current Duplex calls, it is likely that the collection of a lot of usage data will be important now that the deployment has start.

The fact that Google Duplex is available to the public has given us the first opportunity to see how the service actually works in practice. You can access the option that allows Google Assistant to make the call by generally requesting it to "make a reservation" or by searching for a specific restaurant and requesting a table from there. A brief conversation with Google then occurs, in which you give details such as the size of the party, the date, the time and a backup phone number. Then, once the reservation is made, it is transferred to your "My Bookings" list with other appointments extracted from your emails or manually added to your calendar.

Google has not yet confirmed when the service could become more accessible to the public. We solicited comments from Google. We will update this article as soon as we have new answers.