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Nick Abouzeid

Google Duplex - An AI assisstant that can talk on the phone πŸ€–

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Google Duplex is an AI assistant that can actually talk to humans to get what you need. Powered by Google's powerful AI and tucked into Google Assistant, you'll be able to book reservations and schedule haircuts at hundreds of thousands of restaurants in seconds. More features to come soon.

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Calum Webb
"Ok Google, Pick up call from Telemarketers/Fake Windows Support and waste as much of their time as possible"
James Welch
@calum_webb my favorite EVER product hunt comment!!!!! :-)
Menachem Pritzker
@calum_webb funny... my first thought is that this is going to be great for telemarketing :)
Ryan Hoover
@mdavep and prank calls 😈
Davis Baer
@rrhoover We finally have a suitable replacement for soundboard prank calls! https://www.realmofdarkness.net/...
Johann Potakowskyj
@calum_webb @mdavep and for Nigeria Connection calls ... we should tell Google to add special nice features answering love scam calls.
Nick Abouzeid
Hunter
My jaw hasn't dropped so quickly while watching a developer conference in years. Google is lightyears ahead of anybody in AI, and their new scarily accurate AI assistant is only the first iteration of this tech. Imagine being able to ask every restaurant in New York City what their current wait time is, or when their nearest reservation is... in the course of 30 seconds. Insane.
Hans Yadav
@nickabouzeid Imagine being the business that fields the thousands of calls per day because there’s no cost from the consumer to make them. As the consumer I’m stoked about this tech, but I suspect there will be additional innovation on the business end to curb call fatigue, spam, etc.
Ryan Hoover
@nickabouzeid I spoke with a startup that was building for calling businesses using AI. Their demo was impressive but not even close to what Google just showed off. EDIT: here's that startup
Yann
@nickabouzeid @laxbrownie Pretty sure that the next logical step for Google Duplex is to give Businesses access to the AI to take these kind of phone calls. So at the end of the day we have AI talking to AI ... πŸ€·β€β™€οΈ
Nick Abouzeid
Hunter
@laxbrownie @yannschaub or API talking to API πŸ€”
Nick Abouzeid
Hunter
@laxbrownie This same argument was used when free online reservation platforms (Opentable, Google Reservations) launched... which has been disproven by their stunning success. Consumers aren't malicious.
Jerre Baumeister
Looks like an AI salesforce is eerily close 😐
James Welch
@jerrebm definitely...interesting, scary, exciting all at once
Ryan Hoover
@jerrebm you're absolutely right. I used to work at a call center doing support and outbound sales. Tech like this will eventually replace many of these jobs. We already have (non-intelligent) robot telemarketers.
Florent Bouchy

I wish people (especially brilliant people) would stop working on such vain and dooming projets "just because they can" whilst their abilities are so desperately needed to solve major problems like climate change and pollution, politics and wealth distribution, animal and human welfare, health, etc. etc. etc.

Pros:

It seems to "work", but...

Cons:

WHYYYYYYY?!??! So much effort directed towards such shallowly egotistic goals when there are so many real problems to solve on the planet...

Oleg Estrin
Come on, this is just a proof of concept for what Google is capable of in terms of understanding and imitating human speech, they used this as an example because making appointments is easy to relate to for almost anyone. You have to look past the surface and realise what this means for the way we interact with machines in the near future. Imagine a fully conversational interface for your everyday tasks like reading and replying to emails you'll just listen and dictate stuff to your virtual personal assistant and it will never feel like you are talking to a computer. This is basically v 0.1 of the OS they portray in the film HER, I highly recommend it.
Julian Ustiyanovych
C'mon, Florent, because no one pay for it, so obvious :)
Swann Polydor
Look like we officially passed the Turing test.
Graeme
πŸ€–πŸ’¬πŸ€– when the robot answers on the other side
Suganthan Mohanadasan
The AI's voice sounds so natural. Very impressive. What if we take out the caller and put this into the receiver. AI that can answer a barrage of angry technical support calls while keeping the composure and direct people to different department seamlessly. Or even an autoresponder to businesses when people call asking for an inquiry the AI can answer them and also take down details.
Ryan Marr
At first glance this seems incredibly impressive. But at second glance I'm reminded of three hours ago when I got out of the shower and said "Hey Google" to my google designed and built pixel, and nothing happened. I said it again, this time louder and slower "HEEYYY GGOOOGGGLLEE" still nothing. My hands are wet as I'm towelling off and all I want to know is what time it is. Either my phone knows this is what I want and is trolling me, or this demo is years, and years, and years away from being a reality in production. I frankly, won't be surprised if Amazon beats them to market with this same product. My echo dot has literally never let me down. I've almost given up completely on the google assistant on my phone. To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe the engine behind this is completely silo'd from the existing google assistant?
Daylen Sawchuk
@ryanmarr I am hoping that Google joins the partnership between Alexa and Cortana, so you can ask questions to either AI.
Paul Clark
@ryanmarr Agreed. Amazon Alexa nearly always delivers the result I expect. Google Assistant and Apple Siri fail often. But, I like what I see here-- great competition for Apple and Amazon to all keep pushing the limits.
ΰ² _ΰ² 

This is a new low. First automated call centers that go nowhere. Then chat bots. Technologist like this guy don't get it.

Pros:

It's funny?

Cons:

Robots are stupid and I don't want to live in a world where I don't know if I'm speaking to a person or not.

Tim C
this + Nest could be pretty awesome. Enabling Nest to identify a break in and calls 911 on your behalf.
Abadesi
I can't wait to use this to book a doctor's appointment on the NHS.
Joseph Wood
This is amazing technology that will have no use in the average lives of Americans. I’ve made two reservations in 2 years and they each took 2 minutes to make by using Open Table. I book my haircuts though an online portal that takes 2 minutes also. This is a great demo, but doesn’t offer anything usable in my daily life.
Dillon Nichols
@iamjmw Like Sundar said, there's a majority of small companies that don't have online booking systems. Ideally they would make every appointment through an API, but if that's not possible then this technology can bridge the gap.
Joe Ringenberg
@iamjmw Surely there must be a third use case for AI beyond dinner reservations and hair cuts.
Daniel Marcinkowski
That was literally my expression while I was watching that part of the keynote: 🀯
Francisco Lopez

So cool the restaurant call show in the Google IO 2018

Pros:

Super Cool feature form Google Assint

Cons:

I wanna test on my own

Youssef Sarhan
Thoughts: 1. The first call, the both sounded like robots. 2. Speaking of which, next we will have a robot to answer calls. At which point, the idea has folded back on itself and it's now just an app again. 3. Super cool natural voice though. Keen to see this develop without homogenising vocabulary and culture.
Brian Lee
@ys most people answering these calls need to act like one because they want to get off the call and either get back to their job e.g. cutting hair or on to the next incoming call. It’s a natural fit for AI
Mikhail Zhuro
While the technology looks really great on paper, it is still not out there. Bet they’ll need at least a couple of years to make it at least somewhat close to the demo.
Joan Salvatella
@mikhail_zhuro Bookline is Reverse Google Duplex and it's already working in restaurants in Spain. Can't wait 'til Google Duplex lands in Spain so we can have them both have a talk. https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Kyle Zappitell
I'm curious what would happen if you have the AI assistant talk to an AI hostess? Would they get along? Would they have AI inside jokes?
JoshTodd
This is insane! It even puts in the little β€œuhh” and β€œumm” that humans make while we are processing. Calling businesses to book appointments is one of my most loathed tasks. Can’t wait for this.
Vybhav Ramachandran
I'm guessing that this just ruined Elon Musk's week, knowing that we're close to AI passing "narrow" turning tests. I'm scared too. Scared and excited.
soner haci

looking forward testing it

Pros:

Respect on Turing test

Cons:

I am not sure if that will work in all conditions

Sebastian Crossa
It really is a great product, but it doesn't actually pass the Turing test!
Joe Lei
Super scary.