> The end game is clearly to use an api, not this.
My understanding is API integration is what wechat is in china -- every hair salon and equivalent-of-corner-pizza shop has some wechat integration, payment and all.
Voice bots like this will have the advantage of ubiquity. At least a couple years ago before every resteraunt had 5 tablets for all their seamless/grubhub/chowhound/whatever apps, pretty much the only reason the fax machine was still around was for restaurant ordering. Although there were clearly better ways of doing it (see how Dominos reinvented itself as a tech company), the sheer ubiquity of fax as the lowest common denominator kept the tech around.
In that light, it's kinda like the cell-phones-leapfrogging-landlines-in-developing-countries argument... part of the wechat story involves a massive population entering the consumer class at a time when everything was digital. Call me out if this is a gross over-generalization, but in a way, the wechat population never had to deal with the backwards-compatibility of people growing up ordering a pizza over the phone.
It'll be interesting to see how the API-centric approach (wechat) plays out versus the lowest-common-denominator ubiquity approach (voicebots). I'd stop short of calling API's the end game though.
Also, in the WeChat model, everyone is tied to WeChat and can't go around it.
This voice based model can be integrated into any existing system. It already has the network effect going for it and it's not tied to the fate of any one company
No, you just become tied to Google. You can't reimplement Duplex yourself without reimplementing both their API and their voice recognition verbatim, and the best way to do that is to simply use their product.
Not necessarily. Given the rate of progress in AI and the number of companies working on it, it's only a matter of time until Duplex-like tech is reimplemented by other large corps like Amazon and Microsoft, and eventually it'll could even be implemented by startups if there is a decent business case for it
My understanding is API integration is what wechat is in china -- every hair salon and equivalent-of-corner-pizza shop has some wechat integration, payment and all.
Meanwhile in NYC, good luck getting the bodega on the corner to even take your debit card.
Eh? The vast majority of bodegas in NYC take credit cards. Many have minimums, or charge a fee if you don't hit the minimum. But I've not been to a bodega in the last ~5 years that didn't accept credit cards in one form or another. > 5 years ago, sure, but now pretty much everyone's got them (even in the rougher neighborhoods).
If they don't accept cards, they almost always have an ATM.
My complaint in NYC is the uptick of "cashless" places, that don't accept legal US tender. I like using cash, I don't want it to go away.
My understanding is API integration is what wechat is in china -- every hair salon and equivalent-of-corner-pizza shop has some wechat integration, payment and all.
Voice bots like this will have the advantage of ubiquity. At least a couple years ago before every resteraunt had 5 tablets for all their seamless/grubhub/chowhound/whatever apps, pretty much the only reason the fax machine was still around was for restaurant ordering. Although there were clearly better ways of doing it (see how Dominos reinvented itself as a tech company), the sheer ubiquity of fax as the lowest common denominator kept the tech around.
In that light, it's kinda like the cell-phones-leapfrogging-landlines-in-developing-countries argument... part of the wechat story involves a massive population entering the consumer class at a time when everything was digital. Call me out if this is a gross over-generalization, but in a way, the wechat population never had to deal with the backwards-compatibility of people growing up ordering a pizza over the phone.
It'll be interesting to see how the API-centric approach (wechat) plays out versus the lowest-common-denominator ubiquity approach (voicebots). I'd stop short of calling API's the end game though.