Limited Google Duplex Rollout Coming to Pixel 3 in November
Google Duplex is ready for real world users, but not too many of them. At the Made by Google event today, the Pixel 3 smartphone was center stage and one of its new features will be Google Duplex, the AI assistant that will book restaurant reservations and hair salon appointments for you in four cities starting next month. A blog post Mario Queiroz, Google GM and VP of Pixel commented:
“Pixel users in the U.S. will be the first to get access to an experimental new Google Assistant feature, powered by Duplex technology, which helps you complete real-world tasks over the phone, like calling a restaurant to book a table. This feature will initially be available later this year in New York, Atlanta, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area to help people book restaurant reservations and will roll out to other U.S. cities in the future.”
Use in California with Require Two-Party Consent
States for three of those four cities require only one-party consent for recording a phone call, a necessary technical requirement for Google Duplex to work. In Arizona, Georgia and New York permission granted by the user of Google Duplex is legally sufficient to record a call so Google Duplex artificial intelligence can apply natural language processing (NLP) to the conversation. However, California requires two-party consent. That means Google Duplex would be required to request consent to record the call in order to perform the automated booking service.
Google said previously that Duplex will reveal that it is an assistant calling and it appears it will also ask for consent in some way at least for calls in California. Voicebot has asked for clarification about how this process will be executed and will update this article as we learn more.
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