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Watch the video above. Then watch him again, but close your eyes. Listen carefully to the voice making a reservation at the restaurant.
Duplex – Google's artificially intelligent chat agent who can arrange phone appointments – has begun to be deployed in a "small group" of Google Pixel phone owners in select cities (Atlanta, New York, Phoenix and San Francisco). At the moment, the feature only works in English, in some restaurants, and can not handle any other business appointments.
As news about slowly available functionality spreads, there was much debate as to whether it was worth it. As many have pointed out, it seems faster to call the restaurant yourself than having to grab all that is needed in Google Assistant and wait for confirmation. However, there are many scenarios in which this is helpful – if you experience a speech problem, social anxiety when making your phone calls, in a place where you can not call, the restaurant is closed when you want to make a reservation, etc.
I want to focus on another part of the news that is the subject of a passionate discussion: the Google Duplex Voice. Many people can not understand how human it looks, even though I've watched the video so many times that I'm convinced of it. is not his human.
Too human
If you listen very carefully, you will notice "errors" in the way the AI Duplex speaks. I quote the errors in quotation marks, because I am not quite sure that Google wants the technology to perfectly mimic the way a human assistant would lead the conversation.
What Duplex says seems extremely believable – especially multiple thanks and "hello" in the end. But you can say that something is wrong if you pay attention to breaks. They are a little too long, especially at the beginning and end. For starters, a human could fill such a void with a hum or a hu, out of respect for the person on the other side. In the end, it's clear that the Duplex mode does not hang up first (until it gets some sort of confirmation, anyway).
This is what I call "mistakes". But I do not know if Google is looking for perfection. And frankly, I do not think it should be.
Making sure that the voice of conversational AI does not ring in a robotic way makes sense – it's just more pleasant and comfortable to talk about. But have it perfectly reproduced what a human would do? It's just too good a thing.
Disclosure and transparency
In this Duplex Announcement at the beginning of the year, here is how the voice presented itself:
Hi! I am the Google assistant who calls to make a reservation for a customer. This automated call will be recorded.
In the call we recorded, the wording has changed slightly, removing the part that makes it quite clear that it is not a human call:
Hello, I'm calling to make a reservation for a client. I'm calling from Google. The call can therefore be registered.
I'm sure Google is always repeating here: the label will probably change several times. The team could actually be testing multiple A / B versions.
But there is a reason why this disclosure is here. You will remember that Google had received a ton of criticism after its first demo of Duplex in May. Many did not have fun 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.
It's a double-edged sword. If Duplex is wrong and the conversation is interrupted, it gives Google a bad image. If Duplex strives too much to be human, it becomes scary and … gives Google a bad image.
The trick is to find a perfect balance: accurate and intelligent, but also transparent and honest.
Although Duplex is a feature for users, currently exclusive to Pixel phones, it is ultimately businesses that interact with conversational AI. This is the part she can not miss. Google has to walk a little tightrope or any experience will collapse.
More videos to come
We may have recorded the first video of Duplex in Action, but I suspect it will give rise to a whole new kind of content.
The duplex will mess, and it will be hilarious. Duplex will make serious mistakes, and it will be worrying. Duplex will do things too well, and it will be scary.
But hey, at least, the Internet will document it with a lot of videos.
ProBeat is a column in which Emil talks about everything that goes through this week.
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