Google robot may soon, um, be talking for you
Google will start publicly testing a controversial artificial intelligence service that mimics real human voices in the coming weeks.
The service, called Google Duplex, calls local businesses on behalf of users to book reservations and check holiday hours. It comes with different human-sounding voices that use natural speech patterns like elongating words and saying “um” as it processes information, making it sound less robotic.
Google said Google Duplex can better understand complex sentences and respond faster compared to other services. Google said it could also assist people who don’t speak the local language or those with hearing problems. That could give it an advantage over competitors like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, which can’t talk to businesses on behalf of users.
But Duplex provoked ethics and privacy concerns after it was introduced at a conference last month. It wasn’t clear on the sample recordings if businesses knew that they were talking to a robot, not a human, or if they were being recorded.
Duplex’s human imitation was “horrifying,” Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina associate professor, wrote on Twitter in May. “Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing.”
Google responded that
the service is a work in progress and that it will disclose itself as not a real human. “We are designing this feature with disclosure built in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified,” the company said in a statement in May.
The robot will also disclose that calls are being recorded in certain jurisdictions, Google said. California state laws require both parties to consent to recorded phone calls. Google said Tuesday that restaurants will be allowed to opt out of Duplex calls.
The company showed off another demo of the service at Oren’s Hummus Shop in Mountain View on Tuesday and will soon start testing with the help of real users.
“Obviously, it’s a little creepy,” said Gwyneth Borden, executive director of Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a San Francisco restaurant industry group.
She also had concerns that the assistant could hurt restaurants financially. Duplex could enable users to “game the system” and easily book multiple reservations for one time slot and decide later which place to go. In contrast, existing online booking services like OpenTable allow users to reserve only one time slot at a time, she said. (Of course, people can get around that by using different email addresses.)
She’s also unsure if Duplex will be able to answer more complex questions, like whether the customer has dietary restrictions or would agree to a prix fixe menu.
Google said in a blog post that Duplex will help restaurants by reminding customers about upcoming appointments. It could also call restaurants to inquire about holiday hours and then post that information on Google to inform more customers.
But Borden said some restaurants deliberately avoid digital bookings because they want to have human confirmations on reservations.
“Some restaurants are uncomfortable with online platforms,” said Borden.