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Google's Eerily Human-Sounding Duplex AI Voice Assistant Could Make It Into Call Centers

Does the rise of Skynet start with an intense customer service phone call?

Charles Singletary Jr

July 6, 2018 8:30 AM

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Google Duplex is an AI system with an eerily human-sounding voice that conducts natural conversations to carry out tasks over the phone. To no one's surprise, it looks like at least one major company is discussing the use of Duplex for customer service calls.

Gizmodo reports via The Information that Google is making moves to see if its human-sounding AI assistant can be used in at least one potential customer's call center operations. It's an unnamed large insurance company and the plan is to use it for simple and straight-forward service calls. Don't forget: Google Assistant was used to shoot a gun recently. 

The immediate thought it that this will impact a large number of workers. All we can do is theorize at this moment, as it is unclear if the company or other companies will utilize the service to simply free up human employees for more in-depth service or cut down on costs by eliminating the need for some human employees. Even if it turns out to be the former, it's naive to think that advances in Duplex tech wouldn't lead to the later at some point. Google gave Gizmodo this statement:

"We’re currently focused on consumer use cases for the Duplex technology where we can help people get things done, rather than applying it to potential enterprise use cases. 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. It’s important that we get the experience right, and we’re taking a slow and measured approach as we incorporate learnings and feedback from our tests."

Gizmodo also added that Research and Markets projects cloud-based customer call center market will reach $21 billion by 2022. Amazon is another major voice (pun intended) in this market, selling a version of Alexa for similar uses to Duplex. What are your thoughts? Share them with us in Chatty and stay tuned to Shacknews for more updates.

Charles Singletary Jr

News Editor

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.