The Google Assistant will identify himself at the beginning of conversations when he starts making phone calls on behalf of real users later this year using Google's AI duplex technology with human sound. It will also alert those at the other end of the conversation "in certain jurisdictions" that the calls are being recorded, according to Bloomberg who reported on the details that were shared at a company meeting on Thursday. Certain jurisdictions? Many states require the consent of both parties to record phone calls, so it is a necessary step. But really, I really hope Google plans to share that information on every call, not just in areas where the law requires it.
The turmoil that followed the Duplex I / O demonstration encompassed a range of emotions, from the amazement at the mimic of casual human speech technology to the deep concern for ethics, and the company has attempted to resolve the fear about Duplex in the following days. . Duplex will be launched experimentally this summer and will allow consumers to call companies to make restaurant reservations or hair appointments.
In the I / O scenario, CEO Sundar Pichai said Assistant / Duplex would record calls so that users could review the conversation later to see how things went. But he did not say if the recipient would be informed about the capture of the call. A few days after the I / O, Google emphasized that "transparency in technology is important" and said "we will make sure that the system is properly identified". Now we know that it's probably something like a friend "Hi, this is the Google Assistant greeting!", Although it will still sound real enough to happen as a real person. Still creepy?
Over the past week, there has been some skepticism about whether the Duplex demonstrations on the stage and on the Google blog are actually real phone calls made to real businesses. Twitter users seem to have successfully traced a restaurant that Google called, with Mashable reporting that the employee confirmed that he received a call. Bloomberg states that some of the demo recordings were edited to remove identifying information about the recipients.
