A Double Speech Lesson From Google's AI Robot

In a remarkable new app, Google has addressed one of the most pervasive grievances of our impersonal times: voicemail jail, or its technical name IVR (Interactive Voice Response). Although IVR's multiple menu options, long waits, and tinny music are a bother, they pale by comparison with the annoyance of the technology's characterless robotic voices. This is where a new feature of Google Assistant, called Google Duplex, a technology for automating for "real world" telephone tasks, has come to the rescue. And it does so by going against the grain by including the bane of all speakers, the dreaded "um" and "ah" words, also called filler words. Listen to the audio clip in this Google AI Blog post marked "Duplex calling a restaurant," where an automated male voice calls to make a reservation with a live receptionist. You'll hear him say "um" four times in 50 seconds.