No moment wowed the audience at last year’s I/O more than Duplex. The demo of the artificial intelligence restaurant and appointment booking program left many in the audience wondering whether Google had just pulled a fast one over on them.
Turns out, it’s real.
Over the summer, I got a chance to test drive Duplex at a Thai restaurant in Manhattan. And later in the year, the company rolled the program out in limited testing to restaurants in four U.S. cities. Today, it announced that it’s opening things up even more.
Starting this week, Pixel 3 owners in 43 U.S. states will be able to use the Duplex technology to book appointments. The tech should work with any restaurants that use booking services that partner with the Reserve with Google Program.
In the coming weeks, the service will be rolled out to users on other Android and iOS devices, as the company continues to tweak the program based on user feedback. Meanwhile, that may or may not give the rest of time to come to grips with the creepily natural interactions of Google’s new AI.
