Google And Amazon Raise The Volume On Conversational Commerce

"The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." This week I was once again reminded of that quote by science fiction writer, William Gibson, when I witnessed (via YouTube) Google Assistant's latest capabilities being demonstrated to stunning effect at the annual Google I/O developer conference. The scenario involved Google Assistant calling a hair salon and engaging in a natural-language dialog with the real-life receptionist to successfully book a hair appointment. I could have sworn that a human being was making that call, down to the "mm-hmms", pauses and inflections.