Google's duplex is coming out for pixel owners – here's how it works

Calls powered by Google Duplex have finally arrived. Kind of. For some people.

A spokesperson confirmed to VentureBeat that Duplex, Google's artificially intelligent chat agent who can arrange appointments by phone, has gone from a "trusted tester user set" to a "small group" Google Pixel phone owners, who can now use Duplex via Google Assistant to secure restaurant reservations in "certain cities".

Presumably, "some cities" refers to the previously announced pilot subways of New York, Atlanta, Phoenix and San Francisco. If you're not in the Trusted Tester group, you'll probably get an error like, "Sorry, I can not call to reserve a reservation for now, but here's their phone number: [10 digits]. "

To be clear, this is not quite the Google Duplex experience presented in May at the I / O 2018 developer conference in May: Google Assistant has not yet made an appointment for a haircut , and he can only make calls in English. Most importantly, this is no longer limited to companies with which Google has explicitly established a partnership.

"We are strengthening the ability to book restaurant reservations via Google Assistant over the phone using Duplex technology," the spokesperson told VentureBeat. "To help provide a good experience for Pixel users and businesses, we are starting with a slow deployment … and we will be extending our experience to more Pixel users as we continue to grow."

Google does not provide duplex access to members of the press – have we asked. But, coincidentally, our evaluation units Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL have made their first wave. So, naturally, we are putting Duplex to the test.

Book a table with Duplex

The most reliable way to book a table with the help of Google Assistant is to say "Hey, Google, make a reservation at the restaurant" or "Hey, google, book a table," eventually supplemented by "in [a neighborhood or borough]. "For example:" Make a restaurant reservation in Manhattan. "

Above: Results of the restaurant in the Google assistant. Note the "Request a table here" button in the lower left corner.

These statements list options that can be refined by cooking (Thai, Chinese, BBQ, American, etc.). Selecting a restaurant – by entering its name or by tapping on it – will take you to the next step of the duplex-powered reservation feed. Alternatively, you can first search for a specific restaurant and, if the option is displayed, press "Request a table".

Above: If you are lucky, an option will allow you to "request a table".

The duplex does not work yet with all the restaurants. For some spots we tried to book – even those with public phone numbers – Google Assistant launched this error message: "Unfortunately, this restaurant only accepts online bookings. So you will have to book directly with them. "In other cases, it told us that"[couldn’t] make reservations at [the] private restaurant. "

Google had previously indicated that companies could no longer receive calls by changing a setting in their Google My Business account. This may have something to do with the roadblocks we encountered, but it may just as well be a morning commotion. We contacted Google for clarification.

For restaurants that not has been removed from the list, launching a reserve is a relatively simple process. The Google Assistant asks you first to specify the size of your group, suggesting sizes such as two, three or four people. The maximum is 10 – to exceed it, and the assistant cuts the exchange with a message that he can not make a reservation for the big parties.

After having communicated the size of your table, confirm the following date. The Google Assistant suggests taking up to seven days, but it will also facilitate requests weeks or even months in advance. Years are another story – Google Assistant thwarted our attempt to book a table in 2021.

Once you have set a date, you will be asked to indicate a preferred time among the hours of the restaurant opening, in addition to a backup window (for example, from 18:00 to 19:00 ) on the other hand. the requested time is not available.

Above: The Google wizard will not try to make a reservation during the opening hours of the store.

At this point, Google Assistant asks you for a reservation number, which by default is your phone number. You can provide a new one or type the button Manage phone number button at the bottom of the screen to display the phone settings page on the Google Account dashboard. It contains the numbers you have provided and verified for Google services such as Hangouts and Google Voice, which you can edit and delete as you see fit.

Finally, after assigning a phone number, Google Assistant asks you to confirm the details: place, date, and time. It's then at the races.

Management of duplex reservations

It is on this final screen that you will find the My bookings button. Select it and an online list of bookings automatically imported from Gmail, manually added to Google Calendar, or placed with Duplex will appear. Duplex bookings that have not yet been confirmed have a blue "Waiting" label under the name of the restaurant and a See the details link.

Select this link and the Google Assistant provides a web page with a confirmation number and a chronological list of the booking attempts made. a summary of the reservation with the date, time, the size of the party, the name of the restaurant and the address of the restaurant; and the name and phone number associated with the reservation.

What to do if you have to cancel a reservation? Easy – press the Cancel button at the bottom of the screen and Google Assistant makes a call to inform the restaurant. Perhaps in anticipation of abuse, Google has imposed a strict limit of one cancellation per restaurant per day. If you cancel a reservation somewhere, you will not be able to change the reservation before 12 to 24 hours. And if you cancel too many consecutive reservations, you will not be able to use Duplex.

Above: the summary screen confirming the reservation.

An interesting point to note: the duplex is definitely a matter of pixels only for the moment. We tried to get Google Assistant to make a reservation from a Google Smart Display (the LG Xboom WK9), but we got this answer: "I'm sorry, I can not make a reservation yet … from this apparatus." read too much in it, but this answer suggests that Smart Displays will finally be able to press Duplex for reservations and appointments. Presumably, Google does not rush into it.

The duplex call experience

Reserve restaurants with a robot would be perilous, do you think, given the number of problems that could arise. What happens if the man on the other end has a thick accent that prevents Duplex's speech recognition? What if they ask an obscure question that the system has not been trained to handle? Or if the number indicated by the restaurant is no longer in use?

Google revealed earlier this summer that Duplex is able to perform four of the five fully automated tasks. This seems to me correct: every time Duplex allowed us to make a restaurant reservation, the task was completed successfully.

A restaurant, the Café Prague in San Francisco, even filmed us the experience from his point of view (excuses for the portrait view):

Note that Duplex starts the conversation by saying, "Hello, I'm calling to make a reservation for a customer. I'm calling from Google, so the call can be registered. "

Google received a ton of criticism after its first Duplex demo in May. Many did not enjoy the fact that Google Assistant imitates a human so well. In June, the company had promised that Google Assistant using Duplex would show up for the first time.

If Duplex seems so natural, it's partly because it exploits Google's sophisticated WaveNet audio processing neural network and because it intelligently inserts "speech impairments" – the "ums" and "ahs". "that people do involuntarily during a conversation. They come from a branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, which deals with the language used and the contexts in which it is used, including things such as taking turns speaking, l & # 39; 39, organization of the text and presuppositions.

Google Assistant Vice President of Engineering, Scott Huffman, revealed during interviews this summer that disfluencies were proving to be the key to advancing the discussions in the Duplex tests. Without them, he said, people were more likely to hang up when the exchange began to feel too artificial.

They have another more practical goal: to save time. When Duplex is confronted with an uncertain response from a speaker after, say, asking for a table for three, he repeats with discretion – "ah, for three".

Of course, restaurateurs do not have to go to the Google assistant to decide not to do it. At the beginning of the exchanges, Duplex clearly indicates that the call is automated. In states with consent laws of both parties (California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington), he informs the person at the other end of his registration. If they answer by "I do not want to be registered" or by a variant of the sentence, the call is transmitted to a human operator on an unregistered line. (These operators also annotate the call transcriptions used to form the Duplex algorithms.)

These precautions are unlikely to dispel the ethical and legal concerns raised by Duplex's early days. However, as Google moves closer to its goal of launching Duplex in new American cities in the United States, it will be a slight comfort for companies that choose to answer their own phone calls.