Voice AI is available almost everywhere in the US

Google’s advanced voice AI duplex can now automatically schedule restaurant appointments and reservations almost anywhere in the US.

At the Google Developer Fair I / O 2018, Duplex played applause: Google’s new Voice AI booked a place in a restaurant completely automatically via phone. Artificial speech synthesis can hardly be distinguished from the sound of the human voice.

Since autumn 2018, Google Duplex is slowly rolling out in the USA and further developing application scenarios. Among other things, the duplex can now book appointments with hairdressers in addition to a restaurant reservation.

The software is integrated directly into Google Assistant: to initiate a duplex call, all you need is a simple voice command, for example, the preferred restaurant, day, time, and number of people. Then the call starts and the duplex reports whether the table is successfully – or not – reserved.

Google also uses duplex to automatically update company web profiles: AI calls the company, for example, asking for opening hours, and to update company profiles in Google Maps or Search Can use the answer.

Shops and restaurants would normally have to do this job manually – if they also know that their company is listed on Google with opening times. In addition to the United States, automatic duplex update calls are available in Canada, India, Japan, and Spain. Germany is not on the list.

Duplex calls across the US (approximately)

Nearly three years after it was first introduced, the duplex is now Available in 49 states. The exception is the state of Louisiana, where Google cites local laws as a barrier. A timely solution is probably not in sight.

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In general, local laws are considered to be decisive for the fact that the rollout of the American duplex occurred gradually. Google is said to have added some functions from time to time, such as callback numbers for companies that Duplex contacted.

The complex localization of duplex approaches to laws as well as linguistic and cultural specialties must stand in the way of a quick international rollout of duplex.

The biggest legal bottleneck is likely to be the declaration of the consent of the party whose voice data must be processed for AI conversations in the Google Cloud. The American version of Duplex resolves this problem with the same note at the beginning of the call and an optional breakdown of the call.

To generate more voice data for AI training, people had made about a quarter of duplex calls in the past. From October 2020, 99 percent of duplex calls must actually be made entirely by the machine. According to Google, about 19 percent of all calls made in 2019 were to be taken by humans, as AI was reaching the limits of its speech comprehension.