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May 10, 2019 12:50 am

One Year Later, Restaurants Are Still Confused By Google Duplex

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Verge: Google Duplex was arguably one of Google's biggest announcements in 2018, but the AI faded into the background this week at the same I/O developer conference that introduced it just one year ago. Rather than an update on how the AI has been improved since its official release, Google CEO Sundar Pichai simply noted that the technology has gotten "great feedback," then he quickly moved on to announce that Duplex would be coming to the web -- no human impersonation necessary. Instead of the stunning voice-calling AI that garnered a mix of excitement and ethical criticism, Duplex is now also a fancy autofill tool that helps move you through a webpage to quickly reserve movie tickets and car rentals. But Google's machines don't seem to be taking over yet. As the U.S. continues to deal with an onslaught of spammy robocalls, it seems that many restaurant employees are inadvertently shielding themselves from Duplex by ignoring incoming calls that do not display a person's name. Mark Seaman, a manager at two-year-old restaurant Queens Bully, in Forest Hills, New York, says he often tries to avoid calls from businesses that look like they could be pitching the restaurant on a product or service. "Most of our growth comes from our own social media efforts and the parties we throw," Seaman tells me. "We get calls all the time from people trying to sell us something [we don't need]." Although Google does not personally call businesses to convince them to buy ads, it stands to reason why many restaurant employees would shy away from answering calls that list the company in its caller ID in the first place. [...] One year later, Duplex is still limited and, at least for now, has minimal impact on service workers aside from occasionally freaking them out, but there is perhaps an unintended byproduct of AI replacing humans: politeness.

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