Google's Duplex is “Artificial Voice” Assistant – Can Irrupt to Call Centers

Google’s voice-calling assistant “Duplex” is Artificial Intelligence that mimics the human voice. The new technology was introduced and demonstrated by CEO Sundar Pichai, back in May. Duplex can make salon appointments and book tables at a restaurant. Even though the implication seems limited and very specific, rumors confirm that this amazing voice technology will be used in call centers to humans with customer queries. According to a report, this Thursday, an unnamed insurance company has expressed its interests in Duplex which could handle simple and repetitive calls from their customers and seek the help of any human assistant if the call gets escalated or more complicated.

However, Google, as of now, makes it clear to stick with simple customer use cases and expresses Duplex’s detachment from enterprise clients as, “We’re currently focused on consumer use cases for the Duplex technology and we aren’t testing Duplex with any enterprise clients… Duplex is designed to operate in very specific use cases, and currently, we’re focused on testing with restaurant reservations, hair salon booking and holiday hours with a limited set of trusted testers.”

Microsoft too is in the race with its “Xiaoice” voice-calling technology that is being tested in China. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the Xiaoice social chatbot – integrated with popular messaging services, has 500 million online friends and has over 16 channels for the users in China to interact with. And now the chatbot is allowed to make phone calls too.