In the short/immediate term, it should probably be illegal to conduct a robocall without explicit opt-in of the destination caller. (Currently, if you get a non-telemarketed robocall, it is solicited, such as you scheduled an appointment and they are reminding you of it.)

Furthermore, if a robocall is permitted to be made to an unsolicited destination, a robocaller must clearly identify itself, presumably starting a declaration that it is a bot/automated agent from a given company on behalf of another company or individual.

And if the call is recorded in any way, shape, or form, the terms of service would need to be presented to the callee, giving them the chance to accept or deny said terms. (Note that if the example calls at I/O were not staged, and real calls, I suspect the recording of them would be illegal in many jurisdictions, including California.)

> In the short/immediate term, it should probably be illegal to conduct a robocall without explicit opt-in of the destination caller

Existing robocall law (including the National Do Not Call registry in the US) is focused around telemarketing. This isn't a telemarketing system; it's an automated assistant. I don't see the utility of applying the existing law to the new use case, as the goals are different (people at home don't want to be interrupted to be advertised at; businesses do want to negotiate business transactions).

> Furthermore, if a robocall is permitted to be made to an unsolicited destination, a robocaller must clearly identify itself, presumably starting a declaration that it is a bot/automated agent from a given company on behalf of another company or individual.

Why? If I have an assistant who makes an unsolicited call to a destination, they don't need to formally state they're acting on my behalf. What about automating the assistant's job makes it special?

I agree with you on the third point (I'm assuming Google has its bases covered there, because unilaterally recording a conversation is old and settled law).

As I said, it should be a law, I didn't expect the existing robocall laws to apply here. Note that in no way has Google explicitly limited itself to conducting business transactions merely because that is what it demonstrated here.

The issue is that the intermediary is a Google corporate entity, theoretically acting on the user's behalf, but at the end of the day, acting on Google's behalf. Consider that Google's bots may do things in Google's best interests, not the best interests of the party on either side of the transaction.

My assistant is another human being, theoretically acting on my behalf, but at the end of the day, acting on their own behalf. My recourse if our needs don't align is to fire them.

As we already have assistants who transmit our desires by proxy, I don't see much difference between a human and an automated script in that context---certainly not enough difference to justify the need for special-purpose law to clarify the nature of my assistant (and definitely not enough difference to justify shutting down the technology with only vague risk and no instances of social problems introduced by the tech).

> if the example calls at I/O were not staged, and real calls, I suspect the recording of them would be illegal in many jurisdictions, including California.

Interesting implications there for how Google will measure / improve the effectiveness of Duplex. Where is the line drawn between recording a call and recording data derived from a call? e.g. clearly recording the call unilaterally is illegal. Presumably just storing a hash of the audio data would be legal, but also useless. Is there some middle ground that is legal, but also useful?