23/08/2021
Google Duplex was announced in May 2018 and officially rolled out in four cities in November.
Some people initially expressed concern about legal notification requirements of some states requiring two-party consent for recording telephone conversations and others focused in on the ethical considerations of whether call recipients should be informed they are speaking to an AI-based assistant and not a human.
The latter concern is based on the humanlike qualities of Google Duplex’s conversational abilities when applied to focused use cases.
Since that time, Google has addressed most of these concerns and criticism has ebbed. Both consumers and businesses appear to view the service as a net benefit for reservation scheduling activities.
Now we will see whether widespread adoption in 2019 follows the widespread hype and hysteria of 2018.