{"id":2326,"date":"2018-05-14T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2018-05-13T14:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/?p=2326"},"modified":"2024-08-08T10:27:42","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T00:27:42","slug":"google-duplex-floors-everyone-including-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexshoolman.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/14\/google-duplex-floors-everyone-including-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Duplex Floors Everyone (Including Me!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lots of people have heard of or even use the Google Assistant. However at least to me at first, I really didn’t consider the actual name as anything that pertinent. Apple calls theirs Siri, Amazon calls theirs Alexa… Google can call it whatever it wants.<\/p>\n

However Google called it the Assistant for a very straight forward reason, their plan is for it to\u00a0become your literal assistant.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

To help with this they developed Tacotron 2 as described in an earlier piece we did here<\/a>. In it, it was near impossible to tell which sound recording was a human reading out text or the Tacotron 2 AI.<\/p>\n

Since then Google has teamed this new, more advanced natural language speaking AI with much of their other information to create Google Duplex<\/a>. This new product can actually make real time calls with businesses, talk to the person on the other end with naturally sounding language, hold the conversation and make various appointments for you.<\/p>\n

The person at the business essentially has no idea that they’re talking to an AI.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The name “Duplex” no doubt comes from the telecommunications field<\/a> where it is used for half duplex or full duplex. If you imagine you’re talking to someone on the phone, half duplex means that only one person<\/strong><\/em> can speak at a given time. This is like the “push-to-talk” walkie-talkies and is obviously quite old technology.<\/p>\n

Full duplex systems on the other hand enable\u00a0both people\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>to speak at the same time. This is what you have access to anytime you make a normal phone call. I’m guessing the name “Google Full Duplex” didn’t really sound too catchy so they just dropped the “Full” part.<\/p>\n

At any rate Google Duplex is remarkably convincing. It throws in “umms” and “mmhmm” to naturally cover up required pauses or to make things less awkward. It can handle people speaking broken English to it or even just confusing dialogue.<\/p>\n

The best way to get an idea of how impressive it is, is to watch it in action at the Google I\/O Keynote.<\/p>\n