Google just killed the phone call. Well, at least a certain type.
At its annual developer conference, Google I/O, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wowed those in attendance with a demonstration of Google Duplex, a chatty AI voice assistant that is able to make phone calls — and have full conversations — on your behalf.
Pichai announced the new feature Tuesday to a crowd of approximately 7,000 people at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. People were, to put it mildly, impressed.
"Today we announce Google Duplex, a new technology for conducting natural conversations to carry out 'real world' tasks over the phone," the company wrote in a blog post. "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."
According to Pichai, the Duplex will be rolling out as "an experiment" in the coming weeks.
The socially anxious of the world can't wait. Meanwhile, everyone that's worried they're secretly interacting with a computer whenever they are online or on the phone just had a collective heart attack.