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Google today offered an update on the status of Duplex, its artificial intelligence technology that uses natural conversations to get things done, like making restaurant reservations, booking appointments, or updating a Google Business listing, for example. When the pandemic began, Google expanded its use of Duplex for business updates to eight countries, and has since made more than 3 million updates to business listings, including pharmacies, restaurants, and grocery stores.
These updates have been viewed more than 20 billion times on Maps and Search, the company says.
Artificial intelligence technology, first unveiled at the Google I / O developer conference in 2018, can make calls to businesses and interact with people on the phone. For reservations or setting appointments, you can request dates and times, answer questions, and even make sounds to make the AI look more like a person. For example, you can insert subtle vowel pauses, such as “mm-hm” and “um”, into your conversations.
Since its launch, Duplex on Google Assistant has completed more than one million reservations, Google announced today.
The company also noted that it began using Duplex to automatically update business information on Google Maps and Search in the US last year, preventing business owners from having to manually update details like store hours or if they offer take out food, among other things.
Last year, Google also brought Duplex to the web in the US, to help users book things like movie tickets and rental cars. Today, Google says it will start testing the same experience with other things, like shopping and ordering food for a faster checkout experience.
Just a few weeks ago, Google also introduced another feature powered by Duplex, “Hold for Me,” which lets you use the Google Assistant to wait for your phone call and then alert you when someone joins the line.
Thanks to advances in neural speech recognition and synthesis, and to Google’s own new language understanding models, the company says today that 99% of Duplex calls are fully automated.
The Duplex update was one of several announcements Google made today at its Search On 2020 event, where it introduced a number of search enhancements, including the ability to search for songs by humming, better guess misspellings, point users to the correct part. of a page to answer your question, tag key moments in videos and more.
