A closer look at Google Duplex

Pressed by the media about what form such “transparency” would ultimately take, a spokesperson for the company added later, “We understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex — as we’ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important. We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.”

In its current form, that plays out thusly:

Hi, I’m the Google Assistant calling to make a reservation for a client. This automated call will be recorded.

Duplex doesn’t let on the fact that it’s an AI — but if you have some familiarity with Google Assistant, you can probably put that part together yourself. It does, however, let you know that the call is being recorded. Google records these conversations for both voice to text processing and quality assurance purpose, so the company can continue to revise and refine the system.

In my test call, I attempt to get Google Assistant to repeat that bit — it’s easy enough to not hear that opening line, particularly when you’ve got the phone up to your ear inside a crowded restaurant. But the AI just barrels on with the reservation. If you miss the disclosure, you’re out of luck — for now, at least. At present, the only way to opt out of being recorded is to just hang up the phone — not the best way to get repeat visitors.

“We do have a mechanism that will say ‘okay, I won’t record you,’ ” Google Assistant VP Engineering Scott Huffman explains. “I think we’re still figuring out what’s the right thing to do there. Is the right thing bow out? To basically throw away the recording?”

Like just about everyone else getting a demo that day, I try my best to throw the system off. Assistant asks for a booking at 6PM. I tell it we’re not open until 11 — this is Manhattan, after all, the best/most exclusive places keep the most insane hours, right? Assistant politely ends the call — or “bows out,” as Google puts it.

The Holy Grail here is attempting to Turing test the shit out of Duplex. If you succeed, one of Google’s human operators will take the controls and land the plane. These human operators are an integral part of testing for Duplex, and Google says it plans to keep them around in some form going forward, to assure that things never get too out of control. How large a group that will ultimately take remains to be seen.

No one in our small group succeeds in invoking a real-life human during our brief chats, though we learn some important insights into the systems’s limitations. For instance, asked to “repeat the last four numbers,” it restates the phone number in its entirety. It’s not a flaw, exactly, but it does show a simple place where the system is pushed to its limitations with regard to the understanding of the the subtle nuances of human conversation.

Asked for the user’s email address, on the other hand, the system simply says it doesn’t have the permission of its “client” to disclose such information, maintaining the whole “assistant” relationship. Google says that, in testing, the system has also gotten tripped up encountering another machine by way of a phone tree. Listening closely because our menu options have changed doesn’t appear to compute just yet.

At present, Google says Duplex is able to complete four out of five fully automated tasks, according to the company. Eighty-percent is pretty good, but Google is pushing to make things better. “We want to make sure that we’re not wasting the business’s time,” Fox says. “We want to make sure throughout everything we do here, that this is good experience for the business and that they’re not getting frustrated talking to an assistant while they’re trying to run their business.”

As announced at I/O, more testing will commence this summer. Over the “coming weeks,” the next round will find Assistant inquiring about business hours. And in the next few months, it will expand to restaurant reservations and hair salon appointments. Unlike those I/O demos, these will occur with “a limited set of trusted testers and select businesses,” who will be in on it.

Companies thus far seem eager to get on-board. As Google notes, according to a customer survey it conducted back in April, “60 percent of small businesses who rely on customer bookings do not have an online booking system set up.”

For users who simply don’t want to pick up the phone, Duplex provides a compelling alternative. For those businesses, it means adding more potential customers. Those who’d rather not get on-board for any number of reasons, on the other hand, will be able to opt out through their Google Business listings (assuming they have one). 

The box reads:

Let customers use the Google Assistant to book with you. Also, quickly update your listings by getting occasional calls to confirm your detail.

The system has come a long way since it began life as a jury-rigged demo with an office phone placed gingerly atop a MacBook. Duplex operates through a complex combination of speech to text, text to speech and Google’s own WaveNet audio processing deep neural network. The early demos weren’t live as some speculated, but they were, in fact, real — and things are only getting more impressive from there.

Like it or not, Duplex is coming soon. And the only way to stop it is to hang up the phone.