Google Assistant with Duplex helps you automatically change stolen passwords in Chrome

Google

Google plans to use both Assistant and Duplex to make it easier to change stolen passwords on Chrome. Duplex is technology designed to handle tedious, multi-step processes on your behalf (like making a phone reservation). There's a version of this tech that can help you through online forms.

Now, Google Assistant and Duplex will make it easier to change compromised passwords on Chrome for Android. When you get warned about this issue on the mobile browser, an Assistant logo will show up next to the blue "Change password" button.

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Google expands Duplex AI assistant support to Canada, two other countries

Without fanfare, Google updates the support page for Duplex to signal limited capacity availability in Canada, Australia, and the UK. Duplex is a human-like, artificial intelligence-powered chat agent that lets users schedule appointments and gather information over the phone. The support page now shows the phone numbers of the three additional countries that Duplex will use to call businesses in each country. Previously, it only showed numbers for the US and New Zealand.

In early March, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company is using Duplex to confirm closures and adjusted hours to make sure Google Search and Google Maps show accurate information. With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting business hours of a lot of businesses, it seems apt for Google to expand its reach now. 

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Google’s Duplex phone call-making AI needs to identify itself

One of the attention grabbing announcements at this year’s Google I/O is Duplex, an artificial intelligence service that will make calls for you when you want to do things like setup an appointment for a haircut or asking about a business’ operating hours. The demo at the conference showed two replayed calls with small business employees that don’t seem to have caught on they were talking to a bot. As explained on Google’s blog post about the technology, the company is trying to make the technology sound natural. But it doesn’t address the issue of disclosure or whether it’ll alert those on the other end of the line that they are talking to a bot.

Fast Company reached out to Google and the company repeated part of the blog post saying: “It’s important to us that users and businesses have a good experience with this service, and transparency is a key part of that. We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context. We’ll be experimenting with the right approach over the coming months.” And when they wanted to further clarify that the Duplex will identify itself as a bot, the representative reiterated the last sentence so we have to wait and see what Google does with the technology and that they remain aware of the implications or any issues that may arise with this new tech it’s introducing.