May 10, 2018 • 6 mins
An interview with Rishi Chandra at Google I/O about an experiment called Google Duplex. The company showed off a phone call of a computer talking back and forth to a human in a very realistic way - it just might change the way we think about Robocalls.Follow Rich on Social Media:Facebook: http://facebook.com/RichOnTechTwitter: http://twitter.com/richdemuroInstagram: http://instagram.com/richontechEasy ways to listen on your phone or smart speaker:"Hey Google, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Hey Siri, Play the Rich on Tech Podcast""Alexa, Enable the Rich on Tech Flash Briefing"
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Get full access to Rich on Tech at richontech.tv/subscribe
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Get full access to Rich on Tech at richontech.tv/subscribe
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
More on that Google phone call that rocked the world.
I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech Daily at
Google Io. Google made a phone call that got quite
the reaction. It was Google assistant calling a hair salon
to make an appointment. Take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
So happening out here. Hi, I'm calling to book a
women's haircut for a client. I'm looking for something on
May third. Sure I give me one second?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Sure? What time are you looking for a round at
twelve pm? We do not have a twelve pm available.
The closest we have to that is a one fifteen.
Do you have anything between ten am and twelve pm?
Depending on what service she would like? What service is
she looking for? Just a woman's haircut for now? Okay,
(00:59):
we have a ton of can I am a fine? Okay?
What's your birth name? The first name is Lisa. Okay, perfect,
So I will see Lisa at ten o'clock on May third. Okay, great, thanks, great,
have a great day. Back.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yes, that's artificial intelligence at work, a computer calling a
real person and doing all the back and forth to
set up an appointment. That are even the hums and mms.
The project is called Google Duplex. My post on Twitter
got lots of reactions. Luis Claudio Costa said, Siri, You're fired.
Dylan Robertson said it's so realistic that I thought it
(01:38):
was some kind of prank video. Mind blown, and Gregory
Dyke said last time I was impressed that much was
when the first iPhone was presented. Wow. Now you can
draw your own conclusions whether you think this is the
best technology in the world or kind of scary. But
after the io QINOT I got to talk to Rishi Chandra,
who obviously is very excited about this. He's the vice
president of Product Management and general manager of Home Products.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Again, it's about connecting your goals and intent with the
businesses that actually can fill those intents. So when I
want to order flowers or book a restaurant or what
have you, we want to make it as easy as possible,
and today it's not that easy. And so by connecting
kind of consumers with businesses, we think we can help
both people. Right, businesses have more customers coming in and
consumers have easier access to all the great available technology
(02:25):
or services around them.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Rischie explained how Duplex can help with all those businesses
out there that aren't on Open Table or a similar
online booking platform.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I think one of the big insights we found is
that not every business today is digitally connected right. In fact,
the vast majority are still not digitally connected, and so
how do you reach them? How do we help you
assist you in ways of getting haircut appointments or booking
a restaurant reservation. And so the insight was, well, look,
everyone has phones today, and how do we make it
so that ORAI can help you kind of take advantage
(02:54):
of assisting you using the phone. But it's still really
early technology. But some of the examples you saw is
how quickly it's advanced. The ability for the assistant to
really react and be able to have a natural conversation
so on is something a few years ago we never
thought possible. But we're at that forefront now and so
we're excited to experiment with this. We're going to launch
it as an experiment next few weeks and we'll see
how it goes. But I think we believe we are
(03:16):
actually the beginning of something much bigger where we can
assist you in so many different ways that we could
in before.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
One of the big questions, will the person at the
business who's answering the phone know that they're talking to
a computer.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
One of the things we want to do is make
sure we're being very transparent obviously with the businesses, and
so we're actually experiment with the different ways of saying
that you'll see actually in the keynote they said, Hey,
I'm calling on behalf of this person. I'm a client
of behalf that person. That's just one example. There's multiple
examples of things we're actually testing out and trying. This
is a whole purpose of the experiment to make sure
that everyone feels that we are being fully transparent and
(03:48):
that even the restaurants feel it and they understand what's
actually happening. And restaurants of course will also be able
to opt out if they're not uncomfortable technology for whatever reason.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Google also announced six new voices for Google Insistent, including
a celebrity voice.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
The reason for this it's easier than ever for their
computers to synthesize voices.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Generally, what we've done is you need a seed, so
you have kind of a set of voices that are scripted,
and then based off that we can start programming and
so they can almost say anything, which is great because
obviously the assistant can respond in so many different ways
or to be Google Search responses or Google Maps responses.
And what we've done is we've trained a bunch of
neural nets that actually allow us to build custom voices
(04:25):
in a pretty seamless way, and we can actually have
a wide diversity. Right Why should assistant only have one voice?
And one of the most exciting things we are talking
about today is that John Legend actually is gonna be
one of those seeded voices, and so you're gonna have
John Legend actually talk to you. We're actually pretty excited
to get that out the door. So the six voices
are going to launch today, and then John Legend will
actually launch later this year.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
And by the way, if you want to change your
Google Assistant Voice right now, just go into Google Assistant,
then Preferences, then Assistant Voice, and you've got eight voices
to choose from. Have fun. Speaking of Assistant, Google also
announced a feature called pretty Please, which is helpful for kids.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
You know, it's been one of the top feature requests.
I think even my wife notices, you know when one
of the things that kids love about the product is
that they for the first time they're in charge. They
get to tell a device what to do. But of
course one of the things we want to train you
kids on is how to do it in an appropriate way.
And so the pretty Preeace feature is a way that
we can get positive reinforcement to kids who actually say
(05:22):
please or thank you when they're actually interacting with the assistant.
We think it's an another mechanism that we can help
make sure that we're having technology really work in people's lives,
and that enhances kind of the kids' experience with the product.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
There you have it, robocalls two point zero, but this
time they might actually be kind of useful. Thanks so
much for listening to the podcast and leaving those ratings
and reviews in the Apple podcast sapp like Airwaves seventy five,
who said this is an awesome podcast that keeps me
up to date in the tech world. Rich Demiro does
an exceptional job bringing that information to the listeners. Highly recommended.
(05:56):
Thanks so much, Airwaves seventy five. And if you leave
a review, I might just read it right here on
the show. I'm Rich Damiro links to everything I talk
about here on my website. Just go to richontech dot tv.
I'll talk to you real soon.
More on that Google phone call that rocked the world.
I'm Rich Demiro. This is Rich on Tech Daily at
Google Io. Google made a phone call that got quite
the reaction. It was Google assistant calling a hair salon
to make an appointment. Take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
So happening out here. Hi, I'm calling to book a
women's haircut for a client. I'm looking for something on
May third. Sure I give me one second?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Sure? What time are you looking for a round at
twelve pm? We do not have a twelve pm available.
The closest we have to that is a one fifteen.
Do you have anything between ten am and twelve pm?
Depending on what service she would like? What service is
she looking for? Just a woman's haircut for now? Okay,
(00:59):
we have a ton of can I am a fine? Okay?
What's your birth name? The first name is Lisa. Okay, perfect,
So I will see Lisa at ten o'clock on May third. Okay, great, thanks, great,
have a great day. Back.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yes, that's artificial intelligence at work, a computer calling a
real person and doing all the back and forth to
set up an appointment. That are even the hums and mms.
The project is called Google Duplex. My post on Twitter
got lots of reactions. Luis Claudio Costa said, Siri, You're fired.
Dylan Robertson said it's so realistic that I thought it
(01:38):
was some kind of prank video. Mind blown, and Gregory
Dyke said last time I was impressed that much was
when the first iPhone was presented. Wow. Now you can
draw your own conclusions whether you think this is the
best technology in the world or kind of scary. But
after the io QINOT I got to talk to Rishi Chandra,
who obviously is very excited about this. He's the vice
president of Product Management and general manager of Home Products.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Again, it's about connecting your goals and intent with the
businesses that actually can fill those intents. So when I
want to order flowers or book a restaurant or what
have you, we want to make it as easy as possible,
and today it's not that easy. And so by connecting
kind of consumers with businesses, we think we can help
both people. Right, businesses have more customers coming in and
consumers have easier access to all the great available technology
(02:25):
or services around them.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Rischie explained how Duplex can help with all those businesses
out there that aren't on Open Table or a similar
online booking platform.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
I think one of the big insights we found is
that not every business today is digitally connected right. In fact,
the vast majority are still not digitally connected, and so
how do you reach them? How do we help you
assist you in ways of getting haircut appointments or booking
a restaurant reservation. And so the insight was, well, look,
everyone has phones today, and how do we make it
so that ORAI can help you kind of take advantage
(02:54):
of assisting you using the phone. But it's still really
early technology. But some of the examples you saw is
how quickly it's advanced. The ability for the assistant to
really react and be able to have a natural conversation
so on is something a few years ago we never
thought possible. But we're at that forefront now and so
we're excited to experiment with this. We're going to launch
it as an experiment next few weeks and we'll see
how it goes. But I think we believe we are
(03:16):
actually the beginning of something much bigger where we can
assist you in so many different ways that we could
in before.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
One of the big questions, will the person at the
business who's answering the phone know that they're talking to
a computer.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
One of the things we want to do is make
sure we're being very transparent obviously with the businesses, and
so we're actually experiment with the different ways of saying
that you'll see actually in the keynote they said, Hey,
I'm calling on behalf of this person. I'm a client
of behalf that person. That's just one example. There's multiple
examples of things we're actually testing out and trying. This
is a whole purpose of the experiment to make sure
that everyone feels that we are being fully transparent and
(03:48):
that even the restaurants feel it and they understand what's
actually happening. And restaurants of course will also be able
to opt out if they're not uncomfortable technology for whatever reason.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Google also announced six new voices for Google Insistent, including
a celebrity voice.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
The reason for this it's easier than ever for their
computers to synthesize voices.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Generally, what we've done is you need a seed, so
you have kind of a set of voices that are scripted,
and then based off that we can start programming and
so they can almost say anything, which is great because
obviously the assistant can respond in so many different ways
or to be Google Search responses or Google Maps responses.
And what we've done is we've trained a bunch of
neural nets that actually allow us to build custom voices
(04:25):
in a pretty seamless way, and we can actually have
a wide diversity. Right Why should assistant only have one voice?
And one of the most exciting things we are talking
about today is that John Legend actually is gonna be
one of those seeded voices, and so you're gonna have
John Legend actually talk to you. We're actually pretty excited
to get that out the door. So the six voices
are going to launch today, and then John Legend will
actually launch later this year.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
And by the way, if you want to change your
Google Assistant Voice right now, just go into Google Assistant,
then Preferences, then Assistant Voice, and you've got eight voices
to choose from. Have fun. Speaking of Assistant, Google also
announced a feature called pretty Please, which is helpful for kids.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
You know, it's been one of the top feature requests.
I think even my wife notices, you know when one
of the things that kids love about the product is
that they for the first time they're in charge. They
get to tell a device what to do. But of
course one of the things we want to train you
kids on is how to do it in an appropriate way.
And so the pretty Preeace feature is a way that
we can get positive reinforcement to kids who actually say
(05:22):
please or thank you when they're actually interacting with the assistant.
We think it's an another mechanism that we can help
make sure that we're having technology really work in people's lives,
and that enhances kind of the kids' experience with the product.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
There you have it, robocalls two point zero, but this
time they might actually be kind of useful. Thanks so
much for listening to the podcast and leaving those ratings
and reviews in the Apple podcast sapp like Airwaves seventy five,
who said this is an awesome podcast that keeps me
up to date in the tech world. Rich Demiro does
an exceptional job bringing that information to the listeners. Highly recommended.
(05:56):
Thanks so much, Airwaves seventy five. And if you leave
a review, I might just read it right here on
the show. I'm Rich Damiro links to everything I talk
about here on my website. Just go to richontech dot tv.
I'll talk to you real soon.
Host
Rich DeMuro
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.