Search giant Google has shut down its Artificial i-powered 'Duplex on the Web' services. Google broke the news through a note on their support page earlier this week.
"Duplex on the Web is deprecated, and will no longer be supported as of December, 2022. Any automation features enabled by Duplex on the Web will no longer be supported after this date," the note read.
According to a report by TechCrunch, a Google spokesperson revealed the shutting down to the partners of the AI-enabled bundle of services, so as to help them prepare for the shutdown.
"As we continue to improve the Duplex experience, we're responding to the feedback we've heard from users and developers about how to make it even better," TechCrunch quoted the spokesperson as saying.
"By the end of this year, we'll turn down 'Duplex on the Web' and fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day," the spokesperson added.
'Duplex on the Web' was a set of online services used to simplify various daily tasks like ordering of food or movie tickets through automation.
As per TechCrunch, Google first introduced 'Duplex on the Web' during its 2019 I/O developer conference and expanded its scope from general tasks to passwords and assistance of e-commerce retailers as well. However, its rollout was delayed and restricted to Android users, leading to many users being out of scope from availing usage of the AI-powered service.
According to the Google support page, Duplex on the Web is a technology that enables Google Assistant to automate certain user tasks for your site visitors. This page describes how to enable or disable Duplex on the Web for your website.
Duplex on the Web joins a long list of services that Google has gradually killed or decommissioned. In 2021, for instance, Google did away with a host of services – Google Toolbar, which was a useful add-on to browsers and was fairly popular among Internet Explorer users. Google Play Movies & TV was replaced by Google TV. Measure, an impressive augmented reality measurement app, was also killed off in 2021.
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