Duplex – BIG

Google will shut down its Duplex on the Web service. Duplex on the Web was an offshoot of Google’s call-automating technology, Duplex, intended to help people progress through common online forms — for example, ordering food or booking theatre tickets.

Per a note added to the Duplex on the Web support page, Google has “deprecated” the service and it will no longer be supported as of December 2022. “Any automation features enabled by Duplex on the Web will no longer be supported after this date,” reads the notice.

A Google spokesperson offered some additional detail to TechCrunch in a statement:

“As we continue to improve the Duplex experience, we’re responding to the feedback we’ve heard from users and developers about how to make it even better. By the end of this year, we’ll turn down Duplex on the Web and fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day.”

The spokesperson also said that Google notified Duplex on the Web partners to help prepare for the shutdown.

Google first introduced Duplex on the Web at its 2019 I/O developer conference. Initially, the service could handle a few narrow use cases, like booking movie tickets. However, Google expanded Duplex on the Web over time, adding features like helping users automatically change passwords that were exposed in a data breach, assistance with checking out from online retailers, flight check-ins, and automatically finding discounts.

The core promise of Duplex on the Web was that people would be able to issue a command to Google Assistant, and Duplex would go ahead and do it. For example, someone could say, “book me a car from Hertz,” and Duplex would pull up the relevant webpage and fill in the user’s details like name, car preferences, tip dates, and payment information.

It’s not entirely clear why Google chose to shutter Duplex on the Web. TechCrunch suggests it could have been too difficult to maintain since it relies on a special user agent crawling websites for several hours each day to ‘train’ Duplex against them. That process could be easily tripped up if a site chose to block the crawler. Likely, Google’s cuts to the Assistant side of the business likely had a factor too. For example, a report from The Information said Google plans to reduce investments in Assistant for devices not made by Google as it pivots to a focus on hardware.

Regardless of the reason, it’s a bummer to see Google shutter Duplex on the Web. It was a really neat idea, and it’s a shame we won’t see more come from it.

Source: Duplex on the Web support Via: TechCrunch

Last October, Google rolled out ‘Hold for Me’ on the Pixel 5 and 4a 5G as a preview in the U.S. Now, it looks like the feature is rolling out to some Canadian Pixel owners.

Several members of the MobileSyrup team saw the Hold for Me feature pop-up on their Pixel phones, and according to a Reddit thread, other Canadian Pixel owners have seen the feature pop-up over the last week. Judging by what both Redditors and MobileSyrup team members have said, it appears that you need to be running both the Android 12 beta and the latest Google Phone app beta to get Hold for Me.

However, having both of those isn’t a guarantee you’ll get the feature. For example, across MobileSyrup’s Pixel 4, 4a, 4a 5G and 3 all running the Android 12 beta and all with Phone app version ‘70.0.394259711-publicbeta.’ However, only the Pixel 3 and 4a 5G have the Hold for Me feature. Additionally, another team member with a Pixel 4a on Android 11 doesn’t have the feature, while Redditors who reported having it said they had the Pixel 4 XL.

MobileSyrup has reached out to Google Canada about the apparent Hold for Me rollout.

If you meet the conditions and are also blessed by Google, you should see a pop-up detailing Hold for Me next time you open the Google Phone app. It looks like the screenshot above and features the following description:

“Hold for Me can wait for you when some of the places you call put you on hold. Your phone will ring when someone’s ready to talk to you. Hold for Me temporarily records your call and is available for only English-language calls. Go to Settings to learn more or turn off this experimental feature.”

If you don’t see the pop-up, you can tap the three-dot menu button in the top-right corner > Settings > look for ‘Hold for Me’ under the ‘Assistive’ heading at the top of the menu. You can turn the feature on or off from there.

Those interested can learn more about how Hold for Me works by checking out MobileSyrup’s previous coverage.