Speaker 1: More on that Google phone call that rocked the world.
Speaker 1: I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech Daily at
Speaker 1: Google Io. Google made a phone call that got quite
Speaker 1: the reaction. It was Google assistant calling a hair salon
Speaker 1: to make an appointment. Take a listen.
Speaker 2: So happening out here. Hi, I'm calling to book a
Speaker 2: women's haircut for a client. I'm looking for something on
Speaker 2: May third. Sure I give me one second?
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Sure? What time are you looking for a round at
Speaker 2: twelve pm? We do not have a twelve pm available.
Speaker 2: The closest we have to that is a one fifteen.
Speaker 2: Do you have anything between ten am and twelve pm?
Speaker 2: Depending on what service she would like? What service is
Speaker 2: she looking for? Just a woman's haircut for now? Okay,
Speaker 2: we have a ton of can I am a fine? Okay?
Speaker 2: What's your birth name? The first name is Lisa. Okay, perfect,
Speaker 2: So I will see Lisa at ten o'clock on May third. Okay, great, thanks, great,
Speaker 2: have a great day. Back.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's artificial intelligence at work, a computer calling a
Speaker 1: real person and doing all the back and forth to
Speaker 1: set up an appointment. That are even the hums and mms.
Speaker 1: The project is called Google Duplex. My post on Twitter
Speaker 1: got lots of reactions. Luis Claudio Costa said, Siri, You're fired.
Speaker 1: Dylan Robertson said it's so realistic that I thought it
Speaker 1: was some kind of prank video. Mind blown, and Gregory
Speaker 1: Dyke said last time I was impressed that much was
Speaker 1: when the first iPhone was presented. Wow. Now you can
Speaker 1: draw your own conclusions whether you think this is the
Speaker 1: best technology in the world or kind of scary. But
Speaker 1: after the io QINOT I got to talk to Rishi Chandra,
Speaker 1: who obviously is very excited about this. He's the vice
Speaker 1: president of Product Management and general manager of Home Products.
Speaker 3: Again, it's about connecting your goals and intent with the
Speaker 3: businesses that actually can fill those intents. So when I
Speaker 3: want to order flowers or book a restaurant or what
Speaker 3: have you, we want to make it as easy as possible,
Speaker 3: and today it's not that easy. And so by connecting
Speaker 3: kind of consumers with businesses, we think we can help
Speaker 3: both people. Right, businesses have more customers coming in and
Speaker 3: consumers have easier access to all the great available technology
Speaker 3: or services around them.
Speaker 1: Rischie explained how Duplex can help with all those businesses
Speaker 1: out there that aren't on Open Table or a similar
Speaker 1: online booking platform.
Speaker 3: I think one of the big insights we found is
Speaker 3: that not every business today is digitally connected right. In fact,
Speaker 3: the vast majority are still not digitally connected, and so
Speaker 3: how do you reach them? How do we help you
Speaker 3: assist you in ways of getting haircut appointments or booking
Speaker 3: a restaurant reservation. And so the insight was, well, look,
Speaker 3: everyone has phones today, and how do we make it
Speaker 3: so that ORAI can help you kind of take advantage
Speaker 3: of assisting you using the phone. But it's still really
Speaker 3: early technology. But some of the examples you saw is
Speaker 3: how quickly it's advanced. The ability for the assistant to
Speaker 3: really react and be able to have a natural conversation
Speaker 3: so on is something a few years ago we never
Speaker 3: thought possible. But we're at that forefront now and so
Speaker 3: we're excited to experiment with this. We're going to launch
Speaker 3: it as an experiment next few weeks and we'll see
Speaker 3: how it goes. But I think we believe we are
Speaker 3: actually the beginning of something much bigger where we can
Speaker 3: assist you in so many different ways that we could
Speaker 3: in before.
Speaker 1: One of the big questions, will the person at the
Speaker 1: business who's answering the phone know that they're talking to
Speaker 1: a computer.
Speaker 3: One of the things we want to do is make
Speaker 3: sure we're being very transparent obviously with the businesses, and
Speaker 3: so we're actually experiment with the different ways of saying
Speaker 3: that you'll see actually in the keynote they said, Hey,
Speaker 3: I'm calling on behalf of this person. I'm a client
Speaker 3: of behalf that person. That's just one example. There's multiple
Speaker 3: examples of things we're actually testing out and trying. This
Speaker 3: is a whole purpose of the experiment to make sure
Speaker 3: that everyone feels that we are being fully transparent and
Speaker 3: that even the restaurants feel it and they understand what's
Speaker 3: actually happening. And restaurants of course will also be able
Speaker 3: to opt out if they're not uncomfortable technology for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Google also announced six new voices for Google Insistent, including
Speaker 1: a celebrity voice.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The reason for this it's easier than ever for their
Speaker 1: computers to synthesize voices.
Speaker 3: Generally, what we've done is you need a seed, so
Speaker 3: you have kind of a set of voices that are scripted,
Speaker 3: and then based off that we can start programming and
Speaker 3: so they can almost say anything, which is great because
Speaker 3: obviously the assistant can respond in so many different ways
Speaker 3: or to be Google Search responses or Google Maps responses.
Speaker 3: And what we've done is we've trained a bunch of
Speaker 3: neural nets that actually allow us to build custom voices
Speaker 3: in a pretty seamless way, and we can actually have
Speaker 3: a wide diversity. Right Why should assistant only have one voice?
Speaker 3: And one of the most exciting things we are talking
Speaker 3: about today is that John Legend actually is gonna be
Speaker 3: one of those seeded voices, and so you're gonna have
Speaker 3: John Legend actually talk to you. We're actually pretty excited
Speaker 3: to get that out the door. So the six voices
Speaker 3: are going to launch today, and then John Legend will
Speaker 3: actually launch later this year.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you want to change your
Speaker 1: Google Assistant Voice right now, just go into Google Assistant,
Speaker 1: then Preferences, then Assistant Voice, and you've got eight voices
Speaker 1: to choose from. Have fun. Speaking of Assistant, Google also
Speaker 1: announced a feature called pretty Please, which is helpful for kids.
Speaker 3: You know, it's been one of the top feature requests.
Speaker 3: I think even my wife notices, you know when one
Speaker 3: of the things that kids love about the product is
Speaker 3: that they for the first time they're in charge. They
Speaker 3: get to tell a device what to do. But of
Speaker 3: course one of the things we want to train you
Speaker 3: kids on is how to do it in an appropriate way.
Speaker 3: And so the pretty Preeace feature is a way that
Speaker 3: we can get positive reinforcement to kids who actually say
Speaker 3: please or thank you when they're actually interacting with the assistant.
Speaker 3: We think it's an another mechanism that we can help
Speaker 3: make sure that we're having technology really work in people's lives,
Speaker 3: and that enhances kind of the kids' experience with the product.
Speaker 1: There you have it, robocalls two point zero, but this
Speaker 1: time they might actually be kind of useful. Thanks so
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Speaker 1: who said this is an awesome podcast that keeps me
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Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Airwaves seventy five. And if you leave
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Speaker 1: the show. I'm Rich Damiro links to everything I talk
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