Google Duplex: A.I. Assistant Calls Local Businesses To Make Appointments
Why Hacker News recommends it
Mostly cited as an example of an overhyped or possibly staged AI demo, alongside later skeptical comparisons to other company demos.
What it is
A short clip of the Google I/O 2018 demo in which Google Assistant's Duplex phones a salon and a restaurant to make appointments. The calls sound like a natural human conversation.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2019 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Cites lathiat · 2019-07 · on “California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure”
I guess you didn't watch the Google I/O presentation earlier this year (which is probably what this law is about I would guess): [this video]
Cites nxobject · 2025-01 · on “Operator research preview”
Re: reservations - Google had an Assistant feature for that 5-ish years ago. I think it only really worked in a limited number of domains though (restaurants, restaurants, and more restaurants…) [this video]
Critical Jensson · 2023-02 · on “ChatGPT for Robotics”
By hardcoding tasks, like old assistants. If they don't have proof that it isn't hardcoded then it is almost surely hardcoded. For example Google Duplex, I remember many being very impressed by this: [this video] That entire conversation was just hardcoded with some if-else statements depending on what the other part said. The tech isn't as impressive when you know that, and anyone who interacts with the tech will realize that these are just hardcoded actions very quickly, but the demos will look very cool. So applying that level of hardcoding to these situations you take a hardcoded script, then put an LLM on top that just generates calls to these hardcoded scripts, and voila now you have the ex
Critical maremmano · 2023-12 · on “Gemini "duck" demo was not done in realtime or with voice”
Well, sometimes I have this "Google Duplex: A.I. Assistant Calls Local Businesses To Make Appointments" feeling. [this video]
Critical maremmano · 2023-12 · on “Mistral "Mixtral" 8x7B 32k model [magnet]”
Frankly I don't know why Google continues to act this way. Let's remind the "Google Duplex: A.I. Assistant Calls Local Businesses To Make Appointments" story. [this video] Not that this affects Google's user base in any way, at the moment.
Critical moralestapia · 2024-05 · on “Improvements to data analysis in ChatGPT”
Google has been "showcasing" since I can't remember, if only they shipped instead :'(. Remember Duplex [1]? Which then turned out to be fake. The more recent fake Gemini demo? What an embarrassment. 1: [this video]
Critical pogue · 2025-09 · on “Chrome's New AI Features”
This sounds an awful lot like Microsoft's Recall , only implemented in the browser. Granted, there have been a lot of times I have trouble finding a website in my history, open tabs or even bookmarks, so I could potentially see how that might be advantageous as long as I was in a situation where I had a second browser for "non-work" related tasks, or this was strictly prohibited in in-private mode. >4. Find webpages you previously visited >For those frustrating instances when you want to jump back into a past project but don’t want to scroll through your history to find an important website you previously visited, soon you’ll be able to use Gemini in Chrome to recall it for you. Once launche
Critical godelski · 2026-06 · on “”
> What "product that doesn't exist" is Apple selling? Google? Who is paying for it? >>> My Google Pixel phone still can't schedule a haircut for me or book a reservation at a restaurant, despite multiple promises This example has been in how many Android announcements? 8 years ago: [this video] You're telling me you haven't seen the same promise for 8 years?