Google has shown off a future feature of its voice assistant – the ability to make an appointment by phone for users, as well as make and answer calls even as it triggers fears for job security among human personal assistants.
According to a report monitored by businessa.m., the technology was unveiled at the company’s annual developers’ conference in Mountain View, California, United States.
The assistant is able to carry on a conversation like a human. “We’ve been working on this technology for years. It’s called Google Duplex. It brings together all our investments over the years; in natural language understanding, deep learning, text to speech”, said Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive.
The feature, according to Pichai, also notifies users of successfully booked appointments.
“By the way, when we are done the system can give a confirmation notification, saying your appointment has been taken care of,” the Google’s helmsman revealed.
The technology is also able to adapt when a conversation doesn’t go as planned.
While others hail the innovation as yet another feat in human invention, market analysts, however, warn that there is bound to be huge job losses following the introduction of the technology. They argue that robotic voice assistant is capable of displacing human personal assistants, as the services of humans in this capacity, may no longer be required with the advent of this invention.
Many have also wondered if the benefits of the technology would be extended to poor and developing countries of the world where there is low internet penetration. Another technology of Google, Google Map, for example, is yet to have its benefits fully tapped in Nigeria even though internet penetration is on the rise in the country.
Watchers of the internet space observed that apart from two major cities of the country, Lagos and Abuja, where there are active internet users and a high concentration of telecom firms, Google Map is yet an innovation users in Nigeria are yet to get a handle of.
Though Google didn’t say how it plans on educating users in the developing world on efficient ways of using its new invention, analysts say Google Voice Assistant will undoubtedly, provide a learning curve for its users in this part of the world, as they may have difficulty in applying it to their daily routine, itinerary and lifestyle.
It remains to be seen how events would play out in the near future as many whose jobs might be facing a threat from this innovation, eagerly hope that the present reality does not put them on the negative side of history.
