Google Duplex automated restaurant reservations expand to 43 US states
Google Duplex automated restaurant reservations expand to 43 US
states — and the iPhone
Local laws are keeping it from the last seven
states
By
Google has announced that
it’s expanding its Duplex reservation system — which has an AI-driven assistant
make restaurant reservations for you — to a total of 43 US states. It will work
on Pixel phones in those 43 states,
but it should be expanding to more Android phones and iPhones “in the coming
weeks.”
Until recently, Duplex has been pretty restricted in
its availability. Google characterized it as a
sort of test for a “small group” of Pixel owners in “select
cities.” This expansion doesn’t quite expand it to every restaurant, either:
Google tells The Verge you’ll
only be able to get the full Duplex experience with restaurants that don’t
already work with Google’s “Reserve With Google” feature, which lets the
Assistant book your table using a long list of
third-party partners rather than calling the restaurant
directly.
Google’s original Duplex demo at last year’s Google I/O stole the
show because the virtual voice making the reservation sounded
so realistic. But that demo was quickly overshadowed by concerns that Google
didn’t sufficiently disclose that you were talking to a machine, not a human.
Being told you’re talking to a machine is a good thing to disclose, but there’s
a much bigger disclosure question
related to laws about recording. Not all US states or other
jurisdictions allow you to record without some form of consent. Not to mention
that when you call into an automated system and it tells you it might be
recorded, that might feel normal, but it feels completely different when that
system calls you.
Google eventually cleared up that it would have Duplex disclose its
identity in some way, but early users still felt that some of those disclosures were too
vague.
That brings us to the final seven states where Duplex
isn’t available as of this announcement: Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota,
Montana, Indiana, Texas, and Nebraska. When asked about the lack of
availability, Google gave The Verge this
statement:
As we continue to bring Duplex
technology to more users across the country, we want to ensure that we
carefully respect local/state laws. We’re actively working to reach full
coverage, but don’t have a timeline to share at this time.
As for the expanded set of 43 states, Google isn’t
changing how Duplex discloses when it calls a restaurant. It still says it’s an
automated system and will record the conversation at the beginning of the call.
From the user’s perspective, it
is really easy to use. But my colleague Chris Welch notes that it
can be a little weird to not be able to listen in on those calls yourself to
hear exactly what happened. Now that Duplex is coming to more states and more
devices, we’ll likely start to get a real test of how restaurant owners feel
about having a robot make reservations instead of a human.
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