Google Is Being Vague With Disclosure In Early Real-World Duplex Calls (theverge.com)

A small group of Pixel owners in "select" U.S. cities are able to use Google's new Duplex feature to automatically make voice calls to restaurants and other businesses on their behalf. Referencing a demo from VentureBeat, The Verge notes that "the exchange between Duplex and a restaurant on the other side of the call is raising some early concerns about transparency." From the report: [Y]ou'll notice that Duplex never identifies itself as a robot. It never tells the person taking the call that they're interacting with an automated system. "Hi, I'm calling to make a reservation for a client. I'm calling from Google, so the call may be recorded," is what Duplex says to begin the conversation. And that little bit -- about the call coming "from Google" and potentially being recorded -- is the only disclosure that it ever provides. From then on, Duplex handles the requested dinner reservation smoothly.

This disclosure doesn't match up with a promotional video for Duplex that Google posted to YouTube back in June. In that example (embedded below), Duplex makes it very clear that it's a bot. "Hi, I'm the Google Assistant calling to make a reservation for a client. This automated call will be recorded." That's a much better approach. You're talking to the Google Assistant. It's an automated call, and it is being recorded; no maybes about it. The report notes that some Duplex calls -- such as the one VentureBeat included in their demo -- are actually handled by a human. "When a human operator at Google places a Duplex call, they don't necessarily disclose anything about Google Assistant or note it's an automated call," reports The Verge. "Because it's not. Not entirely, anyway. Google's Duplex tests involve a mix of the two; some are led by Googlers, while others let the AI steer. The majority of calls are the latter and automated, from what I'm told."

Comments

Re:It's good enough so stop whining.

[AmiMoJo]

It's an interesting philosophical question - is it somehow worse to be speaking to a machine than to a human being who has been assigned exactly the same task? If the machine is good enough it might not make a difference, and you might not even know.

I tend to agree with AC, it's not worth getting upset about. It also reminds me of arguments about not wanting to talk to other humans for various reasons, which lead to them being treated badly.

Re:I will keep hanging up on automated calls.

[Anonymous Coward]

Restaurants in some cities are already charging a cancellation fee. You can't make a reservation without a credit card. Here is an article from 2015. The practice of making reservations "just in case" will increase if you don't have to talk to the people you're going to stand up. People will also try restaurants where they have an extremely slim (i.e. non-existent) chance of getting a reservation and wouldn't bother to call if they had to do it themselves. You can just call all the restaurants where you want a table and stop when you get in. It's no effort, for you. The call load will absolutely certainly increase, even before we get to actual spam calls. We can argue examples all day, but the simple fact of the matter is that anything that is free but has value will be used excessively. This will kill voice telephony. Google Duplex is a parasitic technology which will kill its host.