Google unveiled Duplex at I/O, the company's annual developer conference.
James Martin/CNETEarlier this week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled Duplex, artificial intelligence voice technology that sounds jaw-droppingly human. It's used with the Google Assistant, the search giant's rival to Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri digital assistants, and -- for now -- will mainly be used to book your appointments and reservations over phone calls.
Duplex stirred up plenty of debate about whether or how a such a realistic sounding virtual assistant should identify itself to humans. Google had previously said it wanted to make it so people would know when they're talking to a bot.
On Thursday, Google said explicitly that it will design disclosures into the feature.
"We understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex -- as we've said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important," a Google spokeswoman said in a statement. "We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we'll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product."
Unlike the semirobotic voice you typically hear coming out of a Google Home smart speaker, Duplex sounds convincingly natural. It uses verbal ticks like "uh" and "um." It speaks with the cadence of a real person, pausing before responding and elongating certain words as though it's buying time to think.
With this new speaking ability, Google Assistant gets that much closer to hitting a milestone in the evolution of computing: passing the Turing test. To pass the Turing test, proposed by English computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950, a computer's natural language responses would have to sound just like a human's.
But from the moment Pichai demoed Duplex Tuesday at the Google I/O annual developers conference, people voiced concern about how the voice technology could deceive people. The Washington Post's headline asked, "Should it be required to tell people it's a machine?" TechCrunch pointed to "a failing of ethical and creative AI design."
The phone recordings of Duplex booking a hair appointment and restaurant reservation didn't include disclosures. And Pichai made no mention of the bot announcing itself as a digital assistant -- leaving the crowd confused about Google's intentions for the AI technology.
Yossi Matias, Google's vice president of engineering, told CNET last week that Google was figuring out the best ways to handle disclosures.
"We need to be thoughtful about how we have this interaction while we're experimenting with it," Matias said.
While Google clarified on Thursday that it would make sure the bot is "appropriately identified," it still hasn't shared details on how exactly those disclosures would be implemented.
Read: Everything Google gave us at I/O 2018
Read: Google wows us, but what about privacy?
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