Google’s Assistant will soon place phone calls to book appointments

Denis Balibouse | Reuters

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

The Google Assistant is getting so “smart” that it’s soon going to be able to place calls for you.

On Tuesday, at the Google I/O event, CEO Sundar Pichai demoed one experience where this sort of smart technology will be helpful. If you need to make an appointment for a haircut, for example, Google Assistant can call your barber and schedule a visit for you.

You don’t need to talk on the phone at all.

In a pre-recorded demo on stage, the Google Assistant voice (which uses Google Duplex AI) sounded convincing enough — not as robotic as it currently does — that it successfully booked a hair appointment. In another demo, it was able to have a back-and-forth conversation with a restaurant in order to make a reservation.

Pichai didn’t say when users will be able to take full advantage of these functions and said that more work needs to be done.

Also at the event, Google showed off new features in Gmail, one of which lets it finish some sentences for you.