Google today announced that it’ll start rolling out Duplex, its controversial Google Assistant feature that can make phone calls on your behalf, to Pixel phones next month. The rollout will be city by city and Google didn’t yet clarify what Duplex will be able to do at first.
The company first demoed Duplex at its I/O developer conference this spring. At the time, the feature was controversial because the Assitant basically tried to fool respondents into believing that it was a real human being. That also opened up legal questions, given that the tool had to record the calls, yet it didn’t announce that it did so. Google later said that the Assistant would announce itself on all calls.
In the demo at I/O, the Assistant was able to reserve tables at restaurants and make appointments at salons. Chances are, that’s what Duplex will be able to do at launch, too.
Duplex will first launch in New York, Atlanta, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area and should be available there by the end of the year.
