Move over, Siri! Watch Google Assistant Nail a Conversation

Google’s I/O 2018 event was definitely conceived around the idea of Google Assistant. Watch the most impressive tech demo of the year above!

On stage, CEO Sundar Pichai showed off Google Assistant’s conversational skills. The digital AI made a phone call to secure a hair salon appointment for its owner, and the human at the end of the line had no idea they were speaking with Google Assistant!

With that performance, it puts competition like Siri to shame, but it isn’t actually ready to pass the Turing test yet, although it might happen on anyone of these days.

This update (designed to allow you to use a digital assistant to make appointments and reservations) is part of the Google Duplex project. According to Pichai, it’s a project that’s been worked on for years and will offer a lot of benefits for busy users.

“The technology is directed towards completing specific tasks, such as scheduling certain types of appointments. For such tasks, the system makes the conversational experience as natural as possible, allowing people to speak normally, like they would to another person, without having to adapt to a machine.”

Even better, there’s six new voices available for Google Assistant, including that of singer John Legend.

If Google Assistant changing voices or making a hair salon appointment is still not impressive enough for you, do listen to the other conversations it can carry on. Google just posted more samples on their blog which will amaze you; their assistant is clearly a natural chatterbox!