One of the biggest issues with our AI digital assistants is their inability to understand natural human conversations in real time. We hope this is something that can change in the near future.
Most of the 7,000 listeners who attended Google I/O were left speechless when Google made a call to book a hair salon appointment.
The digital assistant, which is based on Google's AI technology, is now more natural than ever in its dialogues. What's behind the new feature is a technology called Google Duplex, which the company has been developing for many years. This technology allows Google Assistant to actually help in various situations, from making restaurant reservations to making appointments.
In fact, if a business doesn't have an online booking system, Assistant can make a call and talk to people without any problems. All you need to do is give it the date and time.
The Assistant can also add a reminder to your calendar after a successful booking, so you can better organize your schedule or cancel the booking later if you change your mind.
To speak like a human, Assistant uses Google Duplex to understand complex sentences and rapid speech. It ensures that what you say is clear so the other person can understand the content of the conversation.
We've been waiting a long time for Google to bring this feature to Assistant, which it will begin testing later this summer. There's still room for improvement before it's added to consumer devices. During training, there are times when Assistant confidently makes a phone call, but struggles when the conversation is more complex. It has built-in self-monitoring and signals its human handler when it needs to take over.
The reason Google Duplex is so effective in natural conversations is because it is designed to “complete specific tasks, like scheduling certain types of appointments.”.
According to Google, one of the key aspects was to limit Duplex to closed domains. Only after rigorous training in such domains can Duplex have natural conversations. It can't have general conversations in the same way.
The technology may seem useful to the average user, but it sounds even more useful for businesses that rely on phone calls to book appointments. They receive a lot of phone calls every day. If there is Google Assistant on the phone, they may be able to handle things more efficiently.
