Consumers and restaurant operators in the U.S. are about to get their first big taste of Google LLC’s Duplex artificial intelligence.

The search giant today said it has started broadly rolling out the service, which uses an almost frighteningly realistic synthetic voice to make table reservations. Duplex is becoming available as a feature in Google Assistant on iOS devices and Android handsets running Android 5.0 or higher.

The launch comes nearly a year after the company first unveiled Duplex at its I/O developer conference. As with most of its new products, Google took a gradual approach with the AI’s release schedule, initially making the software available in private beta and then expanding availability to its Pixel phones. Duplex’s launch into general availability will reportedly occur in phases as well, but the company didn’t provide a specific time frame.

The service will allow users in 43 states to book restaurant tables via Google Assistant. Making a reservation is fairly straightforward: A person only has to tell the app where she plans to eat and when and how many other people who are going. Duplex handles all the legwork, starting with the task of finding a restaurant’s phone number.

The AI will make a call and convey the reservation details to the staffer on the other end of the line. Duplex produces what can be described as an impressive approximation of human speech, even throwing in the occasional precisely-timed “umm” for added effect.

More importantly, the service is capable of completing its task even if a call doesn’t go perfectly smoothly. Duplex can hold if the restaurant staffer on the other end of the line needs to check something and will repeat the reservation date if the employee missed it the first time.

After the call, Google Assistant will create an entry in the user’s calendar and send her a confirmation email.

In the future, the search giant may decide to extend the service beyond restaurant reservations to other types of transactions. Food delivery would be one natural application for Duplex. The AI could potentially also handle store and e-commerce purchases, at least judging by the sophisticated communications capabilities it has demonstrated so far.

Voice-based shopping already seems to be a priority for Google. Earlier this week, the company announced a partnership with Walmart Inc. to let users order groceries from the retailer via Google Assistant.

Photo: Google