Without fanfare, Google updates the support page for Duplex to signal limited capacity availability in Canada, Australia, and the UK. Duplex is a human-like, artificial intelligence-powered chat agent that lets users schedule appointments and gather information over the phone. The support page now shows the phone numbers of the three additional countries that Duplex will use to call businesses in each country. Previously, it only showed numbers for the US and New Zealand.
In early March, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company is using Duplex to confirm closures and adjusted hours to make sure Google Search and Google Maps show accurate information. With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting business hours of a lot of businesses, it seems apt for Google to expand its reach now.
The company says that at the start of every Duplex call, the person on the other end is informed that they are being recorded. And those who don't want to be recorded will be transferred to a human operator who will not record the call and will annotate the call's transcripts.
Duplex's capabilities aren't quite the same as what Google demoed during its launch at Google I/O 2018. For the three countries, it won't be able to make restaurant reservations (not that this is a possibility these days). But its use is no longer limited to businesses that Google has explicitly partnered with through its Reserve with Google program.
Source: VentureBeat