Following widespread outcry over the ethical dilemmas raised by Google's new Duplex system, which lets AI mimic a human voice to make appointments, Google now says the experimental system will have "disclosure built-in." That seems to mean that whatever eventual shape Duplex takes as a consumer product will involve some type of verbal announcement to the person on the other end that he or she is in fact talking to an AI. News of Google's shift in approach to Duplex's transparency was first reported this afternoon by CNET. Duplex is not yet a working product, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai introduced it onstage on Tuesday at the company's I/O developer conference with only a pre-recorded phone call. That demo showcased how Google Assistant could sound much more lifelike when making use of DeepMind's new WaveNet audio-generation technique and other advances in natural language processing, all of which helps software more realistically replicate human speech patterns.

A series of studies have proven that it's possible to secretly give silent commands to voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant without their owners ever knowing. According to the New York Times, researchers in both China and the U.S. have carried out a series of experiments which ultimately proved that it's possible to communicate silent commands that are undetectable to the human ear to voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. The findings call to light a variety of security concerns as they reveal just how vulnerable voice assistant data could be. In one study conducted by Georgetown University and University of California, Berkeley in 2016, student researchers successfully hid secret voice commands with the help of white noise. The students were able to get smart devices to switch over to airplane mode and navigate to websites by hiding commands to do so in white noise that way played through YouTube videos and loudspeakers.

Google is working on some nifty new features for Google Maps, including a short list of your favorite places, the possibility of a'virtual positioning system' and more. Assistant is coming to Google Maps in a big way, with a ton of new shortcuts, as well as the ability for the digital assistant to text your friend when you're on your way. Google is rolling out a tool called'Your Match', which uses machine learning to determine your location and interests, serving up targeted suggestions for new businesses opening up in your area and more.

Will we demand to know when we're speaking with a bot? Or will we accept that we'll wind up unwittingly conversing with algorithms? Or do we see them merely as tools, unworthy of the values that bind civil society together? These are questions ethicists, developers and designers are puzzling over. How we respond could have far reaching implications for how humans ultimately treat each other.

Google's Assistant AI is getting better every year. It can tell you the weather, or perhaps crack a terrible joke if that's more your speed. Give it another year or two, and it'll be able to pre-order your lunch before you even had your morning coffee. But more immediately, it might be able to make calls and book your appointments in a very-natural-sounding human voice, if a recent demo is to be believed. At this year's Google I/O developer's conference in Mountain View, Google demoed a very natural-sounding Google Assistant making an appointment over the phone - a feature it calls Google Duplex.

Many people have grown accustomed to talking to their smart devices, asking them to read a text, play a song or set an alarm. But someone else might be secretly talking to them, too. Over the last two years, researchers in China and the United States have begun demonstrating that they can send hidden commands that are undetectable to the human ear to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. Inside university labs, the researchers have been able to secretly activate the artificial intelligence systems on smartphones and smart speakers, making them dial phone numbers or open websites. In the wrong hands, the technology could be used to unlock doors, wire money or buy stuff online -- simply with music playing over the radio.

One key limitation in building modern AI systems has been the lack of high quality domain-specific training data, given deep learning's voracious appetite for data. Researchers have responded by getting creative, from less data-intensive training methods to harnessing massive armies of Amazon Mechanical Turkers and teaching algorithms how to watch YouTube videos. Yet, Google's announcement yesterday of its new generation of AI assistant that can engage in eerily lifelike conversations that border on Turing Test material suggests that perhaps in the very near future AI assistants can not only take on growing roles as research assistants and reference librarians, but even go as far as to begin collecting their own training data. While limited in the conversational and task domains it can currently address, Google's new system is particularly notable for the way in which it can fluently interact with real world humans so naturally that they never suspect they are speaking with a human. As with generations of text-only chat bots, Google's system demonstrates that within the confines of a specific task or domain, it is not that difficult to pass the Turing Test.

Researchers have developed a way to hijack popular voice assistants right under the user's nose. All it takes is slipping some secret commands into music playing on the radio, YouTube videos or white noise for someone to control your smart speaker. The commands are undetectable to the human ear so there's little the device owner can do to stop it. Researchers have developed a way to hijack popular voice assistants, including Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant and Amazon's Echo, using secret commands undetectable to the human ear Luckily, the disconcerting vulnerability was only carried out for the study, which was conducted by researchers from University of California, Berkeley. But it still highlights a critical flaw that experts warn could be used for far more nefarious purposes, such as unlocking doors, wiring money or purchasing items online, according to the New York Times.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Just who is man's best friend? Who are these creatures that we've welcomed into our homes--who light up when we call their names, fetch things for us (like news updates and groceries), and make us feel better when we're sad (by putting on Beyoncé and allowing us to order food without even moving)? Unfortunately, it turns out, not just to you. There's a new reason to worry about the fact that your smart device might be listening all the time: She might be listening to someone else.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Alexa and Siri never say "like" or "mmm-hmmm" to buy themselves time. Instead, the virtual assistants from Amazon and Apple are brief and to the point when they speak. They're machines, after all, and their stilted cadence and brevity are reassuring. They show that we can still tell the difference between humans and robots.