Google Duplex is now just a fancy autocomplete?

Image: jack morse / mashable

Not all things get better with time. 

It’s been an entire year since the world was wowed by Google Duplex, the chatty AI that was supposedly able to make entire calls on your behalf. At this year’s I/O developer conference Google CEO Sundar Pichai once again took the stage to deliver some Duplex-related news. The big reveal? It’s somehow gotten lamer.

“We are moving beyond voice,” Pichai bragged to the crowd — apparently forgetting that the entire raison d’etre of Duplex was that it could make calls on your behalf. 

So what, exactly, does the new Duplex do? Well, according to the demo shown on stage at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, it now serves as a fancy online autocomplete for web forms. 

Say you want to make an online reservation for a car rental. Duplex can now assist in that process by populating the required fields. Notably, it only assists — human sign-off is still required.  

It’s important to say that this feature could offer real benefits to those who have difficulty typing or interacting with online reservations — however, in general, it’s not super clear why an AI filling out a car rental form online that you then later have to double check for accuracy is necessarily a huge improvement over just selecting the compact Kia yourself. 

Notably, Pichai didn’t linger on Duplex’s much hyped conversational capabilities. He did note that the service has been launched in 44 states across the U.S., but was rather vague otherwise. 

“We’ll have more details to share later this year,” he promised the crowd.

We’ll be waiting.