This video, courtesy of Tech Insider, was from Google’s 2018 I/O developer conference this week. It shows some demonstrations on Google’s new AI tech that they’re calling Duplex.
In one of my previous posts about the Smart Speakers on the market, I had mentioned that the AI in those are equivalent to baby AI. They had difficulty understanding some basic instructions because they were only programmed with specific instructions and couldn’t understand the nuances of speech and so forth. Nothing like a real AI. Nothing like Google Duplex.
In the demonstrations in the video above, the Google AI is so good that you can actually have a conversation with it and can’t even tell that it’s a machine talking. Scary, but good.
Hello there Skynet, pleased to meet you.
On the first call that Google Duplex made to make a haircut appointment, the only time you can tell something was off was the first time the AI said “12 pm”. It’s barely noticeable and the rest of the conversation was spoken so well that you seriously could not tell that it was a machine talking to you.
When Google AI said “12 pm” the first time at the end of the sentence, you can slightly tell that the inflection or sound level didn’t flow properly.
Do you remember the early days of Dragon Naturally Speaking or any other text to speech synthesizers? On those, you can easily hear that it’s a machine talking because as it tries to say a complete sentence, it’s really only saying individual words with odd pauses here and there so there’s no proper flow.
The second call they demonstrated with Google AI trying to make a reservation at a restaurant was just amazing. Either the restaurant was extremely loud or whatnot but the person on the phone wasn’t listening properly and Google AI was able to pick up on these nuances and respond appropriately.
Again, it was just amazing. I can’t wait to have this type of AI as my Google Assistant.