“I’m Google’s automated booking service.” Why Duplex is now introducing itself as a robot assistant. -- The Washington Post

Also see Google Duplex really works and testing begins this summer (The Verge)

"Huffman and a colleague, Nick Fox, said they decided that Google Assistant would disclose this type of information upfront after experts raised concerns that people should have the right to consent before talking to a bot. “We decided we should be very clear,” Fox said. The executives said that legal considerations were not on their minds when they made the decisions. Two bills — one in Congress and one in California — would require such disclosure.

Duplex is not the first AI to order food effectively through chat or to be so lifelike that it can confuse people into thinking it’s human. Viv, an assistant built by Siri’s founders, was a nimble pizza orderer when I reviewed it in 2016. And Amy, a virtual assistant I once used to schedule my meetings over email, was such a natural conversationalist that a human secretary who had interacted with her once asked me to wish her happy holidays at the end of 2015. (I explained, awkwardly, that Amy was a robot, and felt embarrassed not to know the right etiquette for this uncharted human-computer interaction.)

But Google’s virtual assistant has a lead over competitors because of the vast data collection it uses to train its AI. And that’s pushing it into the mainstream faster than anyone else."

“I’m Google’s automated booking service.” Why Duplex is now introducing itself as a robot assistant. -- The Washington Post