Google Duplex assistant is coming to more states and restaurants
Restaurants in 43 states can start expecting phone calls from Google's humanlike voice assistant.
The Google Assistant will call restaurants and salons to make reservations on your behalf.
The Duplex national tour is rolling out to almost every state in the US.
On Wednesday, Google said Duplex, its human-sounding voice assistant feature, will be coming to Pixel Phones in 43 states across the country. Duplex can make phone calls on your behalf and uses humanlike speech patterns, complete with pauses, umms and ahhs.
The Google Assistant feature is designed to sound just like a person and is used to call restaurants and stores to set up appointments and reservations.
The states:
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
The states not included are Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska and Texas.
Google debuted Duplex during its developer's conference last May and rolled it out to Pixel phones last November after a limited beta test in June. The voice assistant was originally piloted in select cities including New York, Atlanta, Phoenix and San Francisco. Duplex's realistic speech patterns raised ethics questions about people not being able to tell if they're chatting with a machine.
Google said Duplex would have a disclosure built in, telling recipients from the start that they're talking to a robot. Duplex works by telling your Google Assistant to book a table at a restaurant or make a reservation. The assistant calls the restaurant on its own, sets up the appointment if it's available, then adds it to the user's calendar.
"We look forward to bringing this service to more people across the US to make planning a night out just a bit easier. Over the next few weeks, we'll start slowly bringing this feature to more Android and iOS devices and will continue to incorporate feedback as we continue testing," Google said in a blog post Wednesday.