Google focusing Duplex on voice calls, shuts down web version that changed passwords, more

“Duplex” is Google’s umbrella term for technologies that can handle tedious, multi-step tasks on your behalf. The phone version was the most well-known application of this technology, and Google is now shutting down Duplex on the Web. 

Google Duplex was famously announced at I/O 2018 with the ability to make restaurant reservations on your behalf. Mimicking a human when it placed calls, which featured disclosures, it debuted on Pixel phones before availability expanded. At the next I/O, Google announced that it was coming to the web to help your complete tasks, starting with movie ticket purchases. Duplex in Chrome, with Assistant branding, would ask for your preferences and then navigate through a theater’s purchasing website for you.

Google is now shutting down Duplex on the Web and calls it “deprecated.” The company confirmed to TechCrunch and a notice for web partners says “Any automation features enabled by Duplex on the Web will no longer be supported after this date [December 2022].”

Since Duplex was announced at I/O 2019, it grew to support:

• Ticket purchases: “purchase movie theater tickets for users on your website.”
• Assisted checkout for retail websites (2021): ” help users with an optimized and automated checkout experience on your website.”
• Food ordering for restaurant websites (2021): “help users place food orders on your website.”
• Assisted flight check-in for airline websites: “help users check-in to their flight on your site. Android users will receive a Google Assistant Notification offering to check them in for their flight. The user’s details will be pre-filled into your website’s check-in form using their flight booking information from Gmail.
• Automated password change (2022): “automate changing site passwords using Google Assistant.”
• Automated Discount Finder: “automatically apply coupons on your website.”

Duplex worked by periodically training “against your site to enable Google Assistant to perform certain actions.” Changing password was a well-regarded capability.

Google is shutting down Duplex on the Web citing user and developer feedback. It is also doing this to “fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day.”

The implication is that Duplex on the Web was not used too often and that the voice version that handled phone calls was more popular. On Pixel phones, Duplex powers the popular Hold for Me and Direct My Call, which lets you tap instead of having to interact with the actual dial pad when on a phone tree. Google also uses the voice technology to check store hours and product inventory.

9to5Google’s Take

In the short term, this re-prioritization of Duplex does make sense as there are still a lot of phone-only interactions. However, down the road, everything will eventually have a web version and having an assistant that’s capable of handling those tasks would be very powerful.