https://qz.com/1276135/googles-almost-human-duplex-is-designed-to-keep-us-in-the-virtual-world/

Last week, Google unveiled Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out “real-world” tasks over the phone. For specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments, the system allows people to speak normally, like they would to another person.

In CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote, Google’s AI made a recorded call to a salon to make an appointment for a women’s haircut. The Duplex demo is extraordinary; with its filler words, natural pauses and ability to understand context in a specific situation, Duplex gives us a glimpse of how powerful conversational AI can be when it’s designed for a narrow purpose. In the demonstrations, it was not possible to tell the voice was an AI—vaulting over the so-called Turing test, which makes it seamless for Google to collect real-world information.