The search giant’s lifelike AI will identify itself to callers.
Earlier this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled Duplex, an artificial intelligence voice technology that sounds jaw-droppingly human. It’s used with the Google Assistant, the search giant’s rival to Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, and for now it will mainly be used to book appointments and reservations on your behalf over the phone.
It’s spurred lots of debate about how a realistic sounding AI should identify itself to people it interacts with. On Thursday, Google clarified that it is designing disclosures into the feature.
“We understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex — as we’ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important,” a Google spokeswoman said in a statement. “We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.”
Unlike the semirobotic voice you’d normally hear coming out of a Google Home smart speaker, Duplex sounds convincingly natural. It uses verbal ticks like “uh” and “um.” It speaks with the cadence of a real person, pausing before responding and elongating certain words as though it’s buying time to think.
From the get-go, people were concerned about how the technology could deceive people once actually released. The Washington Post’s headline asked, ” Should it be required to tell people it’s a machine? ” TechCrunch pointed to ” a failing of ethical and creative AI design.”
Yossi Matias, Google’s vice president of engineering, told CNET last week that Google was figuring out the best ways to handle disclosures.
“We need to be thoughtful about how we have this interaction while we’re experimenting with it,” Matias said. “We believe it’s right to do this with transparency.”
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