Google demonstrated its new artificial intelligence-powered assistant called Duplex at its annual developer conference earlier this week, drawing cheers for how human-like it sounded while doing things like making restaurant reservations or haircut appointments, with pauses like "ummm" and "aaah" added to make it sound even more real. But outside of the conference, some critics online were troubled by the idea, with one influential tech industry critic, Zeynep Tufekci, tweeting, "Google Assistant making calls pretending to be human not only without disclosing that it's a bot, but adding 'ummm' and 'aaah' to deceive the human on the other end with the room cheering it... horrifying." He added, "Silicon Valley is ethically lost, rudderless and has not learned a thing." But Google has now told BuzzFeed that Duplex will disclose its identity, but didn't explain how it would be done, with a spokesperson saying the company doesn't know yet how it would sound and will need to test it. However, Google exec Scott Huffman told Bloomberg it could say something like, "I'm the Google assistant and I'm calling for a client." Google also emphasized that the Duplex shown at the conference was an "early technology demo."
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