Google’s Duplex-Powered Assistant Offers Movie Ticket Purchases

Dinner and a movie can now be booked through Duplex using Google Assistant, Google announced in a press release on Thursday (Nov. 21).

Google Duplex was introduced at the May, 2018 I/O developers conference and featured the ability to make restaurant reservations. The technology — powered by artificial intelligence (AI) — has now been extended for movie ticket purchases. The ability to reserve car rentals will be offered next.

Android users can use Assistant for ticket purchases in over 70 cinemas and ticketing services like Fandango and MovieTickets.com.

The service uses the data users saved in Google Chrome to pre-fill personal information where it’s needed. It then analyzes screens to either deliver its own prompts or lets users interact with the website itself. Payment can be processed with a card or another funding source users have linked to Google Pay.

Duplex was first rolled out to a test market of Pixel users in select cities last November. Earlier this year it was offered on the Pixel 2, Pixel 3, and other Android phones.

After its initial demo last May, Google got a lot of criticism for enabling Google Assistant to mimic a human so well. The company promised that Assistant would introduce itself so no one is misled into thinking they are speaking to a human, Venture Beat reported.

Although the service is only available on Android phones, Google said in March it would soon support iOS.

Duplex utilizes a recurrent neural network that uses the output of Google’s automatic speech recognition technology, as well as features from the audio, the history of conversations and the parameter of the conversations, to understand natural language. In addition, the tech giant used other advanced technology to improve the ability to have natural conversations.