Google Duplex starts rolling out to iPhones and more Android phones

Google’s automated calling service, Duplex, is starting to roll out to iPhones and a lot more Android phones. The service, which lets a human-sounded robot voice make phone calls on your behalf to book restaurant reservations, launched on the latest Pixel devices in December. Google announced in March that it would come to more phones shortly, and now that rollout has begun.

In an email, a Google spokesperson confirmed that broader Duplex rollout started this week. The service is supposed to be available on all devices running Android 5.0 and higher as well as any iPhones with the Google Assistant app installed. Currently, the service only works in English, in 43 US states.

XDA-Developers reports seeing Duplex work on Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Plus. We haven’t seen reports of Duplex being live on any other phones yet, but it’s a sign that the expansion is underway.

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How to use Google Duplex to make a restaurant reservation

Google first unveiled Duplex just under a year ago, with an impressive demo that showed a near-human automated voice making a phone call to a restaurant and smoothly handling interactions with a real human to book a table. There’s been some pushback against the service — Google initially didn’t identify its callers as robots, though it later changed course — and there are still concerns that the service could be abused to annoy restaurants. For now, Duplex still isn’t available on enough phones to see how much of an annoyance or a help the service will really be.

Update April 3rd, 2PM ET: Google confirmed in an email that Duplex is now rolling out widely to both platforms, as announced last month.