For years, Dogtown Media has been empowering businesses of all sizes with modern digital solutions. As a go-to provider of development solutions to many clients, we work tirelessly to craft intelligent apps with brilliant, intuitive, and innovative design. Through our expertise in multiple verticals, our team delivers the solutions that our partners need to navigate the changing business landscape.

In light of our dedication and passion for delivering high-quality solutions, we’re honored to have been listed as a Top Andriod App Developer in Los Angeles by Clutch for 2021.

Last year was a challenging year for many, but we were able to overcome the obstacles in our mission to lead our partners. Today, we’re excited to look back on the achievements we’ve made this year and celebrate our success with all of you!

At Dogtown Media, we value the thoughts and feedback of our clients — they help us truly understand how we can innovate on certain aspects of our services. They also remind us of the reason we do what we do and keep us motivated to aid our partners. In 2021, we’re proud to have collected multiple 5-star ratings from our customers through Clutch. More impressively, we’ve accumulated an overall perfect rating across all new reviews!

In all of these new reviews, we’ve also obtained a perfect NPS score as our clients have shared their willingness to recommend our services to their colleagues! We’re incredibly delighted to see these stats, and it’s all thanks to our partners for taking the time and effort to leave their honest feedback.

What Our Clients Are Saying

We’re always deeply grateful when we receive great remarks from our clients! Here are some recent quotes that have reinforced our belief that top-tier quality development practices truly make the difference.

“They were an effective team, met deadlines, and created a great end product.”

— Sarah Bauerle Bass, Director, Risk Comm Lab, Temple University

Lastly, we’re also proud to be recognized on the visual portfolio site Visual Objects this year!

Ready to partner with us for your next development project? Say hello to our team for a free consultation!

At Dogtown Media, we specialize in mobile app development, grounded with expert knowledge in the internet of things, fintech, medical tech and user interface design. We are determined to take on your next project and create an app that will help your business grow.

Clutch, a company that publishes unbiased reviews of B2B companies, has featured us once again in a recent press release of top California mobile app development companies.  We’re excited to share that we have been featured highly in their directory list of the top mobile app developers in California. This honor adds to our previous recognition as a top California Mobile App Development Company on DesignRush.

Clutch’s ranking algorithm takes many pieces of information into account when displaying companies on their directory pages; the most important part of Clutch’s ranking algorithm is client reviews. To date, we have received over 20 positive reviews. Our clients aren’t shy to share their successes with Clutch:

“Dogtown Media developed a solution for a project considered impossible to do in the tech world.”

“They were extremely responsive and supportive and I never felt like I was working on anything on my own.”

“Their work has made my life easier by automating features in the app that I was doing manually.”

In addition to our feature on Clutch, we were also mentioned on their sister-site, The Manifest.  We are pleased to announce that we were listed as one of the top mobile app development companies in the world on The Manifest.

Here at Dogtown Media, we are ready to improve your business by creating vital apps that will allow your business to access your consumers at all times.  Our team will work directly with your business to assess how to stand apart from competitors as well. We look forward to taking on your next project!

Each year, Clutch publishes a press release naming the top service providers within certain industries. We’re proud to announce that Clutch has named Dogtown Media among the world’s leading mobile app developers this year.

We’ve also been listed on Clutch’s sister website, The Manifest, a B2B news website that helps buyers through the process of selecting a vendor. Manifest also ranked Dogtown as one of the top app development companies in the world.

Founded in 2011, Clutch is a Washington, D.C.-based research firm that leverages unparalleled market insight to determine the leaders across numerous industries. With unbiased case studies, industry trend analysis, and business market comparisons, Clutch’s data-driven platform allows clients to find and connect with top-tier companies who can solve difficult challenges.

Clutch’s directories adhere to this meticulous, data-centric approach; it’s organized to list the most credible firms first. Credibility is gained by attaining client testimonials and market presence. Essentially, the directories allow potential buyers and clients in need of partnerships to visualize their different options with a holistic perspective of each company.

Check out some of the reviews we’ve received so far below!

Webdam is a digital asset management software company. We re-developed their platform from the ground up. Here’s what they had to say:

“Dogtown Media’s work was a massive improvement from the previous app version and received high praise from customers… They were extremely responsive and supportive, and I never felt like I was working on anything on my own.”

We also got the opportunity to help the University of Oklahoma improve its app with more student-centric functionalities and geolocation capabilities. Here’s their feedback:

Another client required an app for the University of Oklahoma. Here’s what they had to say:

“Dogtown Media’s expert team inspires confidence throughout the project by communicating clearly from the start. They bring creative ideas to the table at a reasonable value… Their work has made my life easier by automating features in the app that I was doing manually.”

The past few weeks have been surreal for Dogtown Media. Recently, we made the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the United States for the second year in a row. Not long after, we were honored again by being included on Clutch’s list!

Both are incredible awards we couldn’t have imagined attaining when we first started developing in L.A. in 2011. We’d like to give a big thanks to Clutch, Inc., our team, clients, and community — none of this would be possible without you.

From humble beginnings as a mobile app developer in Los Angeles, we’re extremely proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far and we’re also very excited to see where the future takes us. We can’t wait to create more amazing mobile experiences for the world to enjoy.

If you have an idea but don’t know where to begin, reach out anytime — if you can dream it, we can build it!

Google’s been a heavyweight competitor against Apple. But its Android system is bloated, which any Android user will confirm. The tech giant just invested $22 million in a non-Android mobile OS, KaiOS, to help Google gain a greater market share of foreign emerging markets across the world.

An Established Player Around the World

Many tech enthusiasts may remember KaiOS faintly; that’s because it’s Mozilla’s failed Firefox mobile OS. It’s already in production and use among mobile users all around the world, and the OS works with many phone manufacturers and mobile data carriers.

One of KaiOS’s biggest markets is India; they’ve worked closely with India-based carriers Reliance Jio, alongside Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Micromax is an Indian mobile manufacturer, and one of KaiOS’s biggest proponents. HMD Global, a Finnish manufacturer, and TCL, a Chinese smartphone manufacturer are other customers using KaiOS in their phones.

The company has offices all over the world, literally: Hong Kong, San Diego, Shanghai, Taipei, Paris, and Bangalore are just a few that are home to KaiOS employees. KaiOS originally began as a fork of Firefox OS’s codebase, and it’s an OS made for feature phones that don’t lose out on their ‘intelligence’ with the minimal OS.

Making Feature Phones More Robust

Anjali Joshi is Vice-President of Product Management on Google’s newest team, Next Billion Users. She says, “We want to ensure that Google apps and services are available to everyone, whether they are using desktops, smartphones, or feature phones. Following the success of the JioPhones, we are excited to work with KaiOS to further improve access to information for feature phone users around the world.”

Google is working with KaiOS to “make the Google Assistant, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Search available to KaiOS users,” says CEO of KaiOS, Sebastien Codeville. Mobile developers (and web developers) can contribute to KaiOS with a very low entry barrier; it runs on HTML5, CSS, and Javascript. There are more than 40 million KaiOS phones in use, and bringing Google products to the OS will add more Google customers than ever.

Why Move Away From Android?

Google’s not moving completely away from Android. But recently, the company pushed Android to reduce file size by slimming down. Pre-installed apps should become smaller, and ideally, Android should be loaded onto new devices to take up less than 1GB of RAM. Only the future will tell if this is a realistic ambition. Currently, Android still takes up almost 3GB.

On the other hand, KaiOS devices come with 512MB of RAM and 4GB in storage. Feature phones are notoriously lighter than smartphones, but just in case feature phones continue their stronghold on users across the world, Google is set to go.

Will Apple follow in Google’s footsteps? We know that once one of the tech giants makes a move, the others are apt to follow closely in fear that they’ll be left behind if they don’t catch up immediately. Regardless, this is a smart move by Google. It not only benefits the company, but it allows many more users to tap into the potential of its technology.

The Internet of Things (IoT) isn’t just about devices; it also centers around connectivity, data sharing, and improved user experiences. Most companies are still trying to get a hold of how developing custom IoT solutions can benefit their operations, but Medtronic, Nest, and Tesla are way ahead of the game.

They’re already utilizing IoT data to transform their businesses from the inside out.

Medtronic’s Analytics Are Saving Lives

Medtronic is a well-known MedTech company, with offices from Boston to Singapore. But this big corporation doesn’t allow the sheer size of its operations to affect the quality it offers patients. Seeing data science take over numerous major company strategies convinced the company to jump into the deep end of the waters.

Medtronic has created a division in its Medtronic Care Management Services department that monitors patients remotely, collects data about biometrics and symptoms, and portals this into a bigger database. Using algorithms, this technology ultimately sends alerts for doctor review. The company has helped over 95,000 patients, and it helps physicians spend less time taking notes and have more quality time with the patient.

Nest’s Reinvestment In Their Customers

The Google-owned company has been known to catch burglars on its smart home monitoring system. Nest has also released more connected devices for the home, like thermostats and doorbells. The company employs IoT in its thermostats, for example, to track customer behavior in changing temperatures. The strategy saves their customers up to 15% on cooling bills and 12% on heating bills.

This isn’t necessarily a unique concept in theory; almost any company that collects data about their customers has the power to leverage that data and put it back into the company for the customers. The fact that Nest is actually taking the time to do this is what differentiates them from others.

IoT Data is Driving Tesla’s Improvement

Tesla is constantly working on improving user experience for their smart cars by leveraging their multitude of data-gathering sensors, now outfitted on cars all over the globe. The company, whose cars are all equipped to become autonomous, or self-driving, one day, updates its software remotely. These updates usually carry improvements made for problems that IoT data identified for the Tesla data science team.

One time, Tesla saved 29,000 car owners time by sending a quick fix for charging plugs to all cars immediately. Another time, in September 2017 during Hurricane Irma, Tesla gave their vehicles extended range by changing the software to improve battery performance. With remote, seamless updates, the company saves thousands of mechanic and factory hours. Customers don’t have to take time out of their busy day to go to the dealership, either.

What Can Data Do for You?

IoT data is a powerful resource that many organizations still aren’t harnessing. But the three examples above show it’s already having an immense impact in transportation, smart energy, and even in healthcare. Enterprises everywhere should start to consider how they could leverage IoT data in their operations.

It’s an inevitable part of the future for enterprises, and rightly so.

Many industry experts believe Microsoft bought GitHub to create a better foothold of cloud computing against its number one competitor, Amazon’s Amazon Web Services platform. And this buy may just push Microsoft ahead of Amazon.

Why Microsoft?

Microsoft’s other cloud computing competitors, such as Google, IBM, and Salesforce, among many others, are in a race with Microsoft and Amazon to get software engineers to use their cloud tools. The idea behind this is simple: the more programmers using a cloud tool, the more likely they are to bring their entire department with them, leading the whole company to enact the cloud services. This attracts even more developers, as competitors of these companies try to match their development environments.

Frank Gens is the chief analyst for research firm IDC. He says, “The strategic battle in the tech world is for developers. For Microsoft, the GitHub deal is about strengthening and widening its relationships with developers.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella agrees. “Developers are the builders of this new era, writing the world’s code. And GitHub is their home.” Nadella also says the business deal will advance Microsoft’s cloud computing ambitions and bring smarter and better code to every industry, on every device. It will certainly be easier for Microsoft to sell its Azure cloud services to large enterprise clients on GitHub.

GitHub’s Unknown Revenues

Microsoft isn’t buying GitHub for its proven business model; it’s because, as Nadella says, “Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub, we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness, and innovation.”

GitHub hosts over 85 million repositories, which are digital storage spaces for code. Some repositories are private (if you pay for the feature), but many are hosted on free developer accounts as public repositories. Web, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and mobile app developers, among many other programmers, can share their code, make comments, create issues, contribute to others’ code, and buy software tools all from GitHub’s interface.

GitHub’s exact revenue is unknown, as are its profits, but analysts estimate a ballpark annual revenue of $200 million. Its biggest source of income is corporate projects hosted on its platform for a fee. The enterprise level of membership allows companies to keep code open-source while creating private repositories for more proprietary programming.

The $7.5 billion payday means GitHub’s venture capital investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, will see a huge return on investment this year. Chris Wanstrath, GitHub’s CEO and co-founder, says he could’ve “never imagined” being bought by Microsoft when he created GitHub in 2008. “Git was a powerful but niche tool, clouds were just things in the sky, and Microsoft was a very different company.”

Microsoft’s Shift to Open-Source

Microsoft was an adamant supporter of closed-source proprietary software staying within the company at a time when Google was very publicly open-source and proud of it. In fact, Microsoft’s former CEO, Steven A. Ballmer, once called Linux (an open-source operating system) a “cancer” in tech.

In recent years, however, the company has completely switched philosophies. Microsoft is GitHub’s most active enterprise client, with over two million public contributions to code. The company open-sourced PowerShell configuration management frameworks and .NET development.

It also developed Azure Sphere, which is a Linux-based operating system geared for Internet of Things devices. Azure Cloud can also now run on Linux, making the transition easier for developers who are used to running Terminal commands in a Linux environment.

Ed Anderson is an analyst at research firm Gartner. He says, “Developers by their nature are often suspicious of corporate ambitions. Microsoft will have to demonstrate its willingness to put the interests of developers ahead of any Microsoft-specific agenda.”

Microsoft Takes A Sure Bet

Experts say to take a holistic look at Microsoft’s acquisitions and current offerings to see how GitHub fits into Microsoft’s big picture. Nat Friedman is corporate vice president for developer services at Microsoft, and he’ll be taking over GitHub as CEO when the deal goes through. Wanstrath will join Microsoft as a technical fellow.

Friedman says owning GitHub gives Microsoft confidence to “go all-in on GitHub.” He mentions that Microsoft will prove itself to be a reliable owner of GitHub by giving GitHub everything it needs to continue growing. “It’s a matter of building trust with developers. You earn the right to be considered for other things,” says Friedman.

Dissenting Developers’ Opinions

Some developers have a strong opinion on Microsoft’s biggest recent news. In the days after the announcement, Gitlab, one of GitHub’s biggest competitors, says, “We’re seeing 10x the normal daily amount of repositories.”

A Reddit user said this was no surprise, and that GitHub’s “real future is a buggy and monetized site.” A Google+ user wrote, “What does M$ have to gain from this, other than by either shutting it down in the long term, monetizing it further or by data mining folks? In just a matter of hours, they made GitHub a completely toxic entity.”

Many developers are worried about the privacy and copyright implications of the acquisition. Programmer Matt Van Horn asserts, “It’s gonna be so cool that Microsoft will be able to peek into the private repos of people trying to compete with them, won’t it?”

Embracing Change

But other developers are welcoming the announcement with open arms.

Jon Masters is the chief ARM architect at Red Hat. He says, “If you’re needlessly hating on Microsoft for buying GitHub, I hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but the world changed. It’s time to move forward with life and accept that in 2018, MSFT isn’t the Great Satan out to destroy all Open Source.”

James Bottomley is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research, as well as a leading Linux developer. He adds, “Companies with well established open-source business models and motivations that don’t depend on the whims of VCs are much more trustworthy in open source in the long term. Although it’s a fairly recent convert, Microsoft is now among these because it’s clearly visible how its conversion from desktop to cloud both requires open source and requires Microsoft to play nicely with open source.”

And maybe it’s not just about GitHub’s user base. Microsoft developer Miguel de Icaza, has programmed several well-known open-source programs. He says, “Satya looked at Microsoft’s bill from all the code we host on GitHub and figured it would be cheaper to buy the company.”

Far-Reaching Implications

What will be the true implications for tech with Microsoft’s recent announcement? Only time, Microsoft’s actions, and GitHub’s user base data will tell. We hope that GitHub remains the open-source, free, and public code host it is today. Collaboration has accelerated many technologies in recent years, and it would be a shame to see this stifled by this recent acquisition.

One thing’s for sure, though: this deal will go down in history as one of the biggest acquisitions of all time, not just monetarily, but for the tech community at large.

One unique result of this controversy is Facebook’s utilization of facial recognition to delete fake accounts.

It’s Facebook, not Fakebook

The company plans to use the technology to catch users who are using other profiles’ photos, but the facial recognition is limited in some substantial ways; it doesn’t scan photos against all of the photos uploaded to the site, and that would be the best way to accomplish this tedious task.

The San Francisco-based developer, says it deleted 583 million fake accounts Q1 of 2018. In 2017’s Q4, the company reported that it deleted 694 million accounts.

A Safe Space for Everyone

Facebook is also tackling spam, hate speech, and other reported content. To help create more transparency for its users, the company also recently published its first Community Standards Enforcement Report. The post detailed the actions Facebook took on reported content in the areas of nudity, sexual activity, graphic violence, terrorist propaganda, and more.

In 2018’s Q1, Facebook deleted 21 million posts containing adult nudity and sexual activity. 96% of those reported posts were flagged automatically by the company’s computer vision tools. The tools also caught 86% of 3.5 million violent posts and 38% of 2.5 million posts containing hate speech.

Some Tough Problems to Tackle

Regardless of these initiatives, experts still worry that Facebook continues to over-rely on user-reported posts. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended his company in the past, saying it’s difficult to develop artificial intelligence (AI) that can determine hate speech, whereas detecting a graphic image is easier. In fact, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s VP of product management, says AI is still years away from being an effective and reliable detector of hate speech and other bad content.

Fighting fake news is another big priority for the company, which was found to be a big factor in helping Trump win the 2016 presidential election. Hate speech on Facebook has also been found to promote violence against Myanmar Muslims.

The company plans to continue releasing updated numbers on reported content and fake account deletion every six months. Whether this is an effort to appease users or to get ahead of the next possible scandal, Facebook is undeniably trying to be more transparent after its shortcomings were recently revealed. In this case, does the end justify the means? What do you think?

Called the Common Reference Model (CRM), the new product, revealed at Uber’s Elevate Summit in Los Angeles to nearly 700 industry leaders, is expected to be an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicle.

Cutting Down Commute Time

The airborne taxi would seat four people, back-to-back. The company hopes a two-hour ride will shorten down to 15 minutes, which would be a godsend for commuters in Los Angeles, New York City, DC, Atlanta, Dallas, and other large U.S. metropolitan cities.

Uber won’t manufacture the taxis themselves; because of this endeavor, they’ll need more than just mobile app developers to pull it off. Partnering companies will assemble the taxis. Calculations predict that the vehicle’s range is only 60 miles because of the battery, but the taxi can get up to 2,000 feet above the ground (about twice the height of the Empire State Building).

A Blueprint for Success

Uber contracted former NASA engineer Mark Moore to design and develop the flying taxi concept. Moore has extensive experience working on electric propulsion aircraft. The CRM has a series of propellers, some of which are backups that only deploy during emergency failures of the other propellers. You can only enter and exit on one side, which adds an additional layer of safety for passengers.

Uber doesn’t expect to build the CRM according to the current specifications; it intends to create this design as a master blueprint for other manufacturers and other car companies to build upon. By creating a blueprint that other companies can use, the designs of flying taxis in the future will be more consistent and thus easier to regulate and inspect. They’ll hopefully all use the same infrastructure, like landing pads, airspace, and maintenance mechanics.

It Takes a Team to Take Off

Several companies are aiding Uber in its effort to create one of the world’s most popular flying taxis. Among the team members is Embraer, an aircraft manufacturer from Brazil; the company has almost five decades of experience in commercial, military, and agricultural industries, making it one of the most knowledgeable companies out of the group.

Pipistrel Aircraft is another partner in the endeavor. The Slovenia-based aircraft manufacturer produces small, electric-powered aircraft. Another member, Karem is a smaller aircraft manufacturer based in California and founded by esteemed drone expert Abe Karem, called “the dronefather.”

Aurora Flight Sciences, another company partnering with Uber, is a Boeing subsidiary. The company’s flown more than 30 unpiloted flights since 1989, including a military helicopter. CEO John Langford believes autonomy is the key to creating innovation in on-demand transportation and reversing the downward trend of pilot jobs.

The last company, Bell Helicopter, is working on vertical flight alongside its usual bread-and-butter of commercial and military helicopters. The company recently revealed a VR experience inside its air taxi cabin prototype.

If you were thinking of getting into the game, Uber’s still looking for more partners that can meet a few requirements in experience and knowledge of aircraft designing, namely for these features: minimal noise, electric-powered, and VTOL capabilities.

Uber’s Contribution

The photo we presented above may not be the end result of the CRM when all is said and done. We expect more companies to join in the effort to add features and request changes too. The company hopes to start testing the UberAir service at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport within the next two years.

Uber has been under intense scrutiny in recent years due to controversies surrounding sexual harassment allegations and a tumultuous ousting of their previous CEO. Of course, it’s also impossible to forget its recent-self driving car tragedy that ended up with a pedestrian losing her life.

If Uber succeeds in making this flying taxi project a reality, it could not only help their reputation immensely, but set the company up for a future expanded outside of its usual scope of ridesharing.

This year’s Google developer festival, the I/O conference, showed that the shift to ‘AI-first’ for the company was in full swing. Held each year in Mountain View right outside of San Francisco, the event has served as an opportunity for the tech titan to demonstrate why it’s still leading in innovation.

2018’s I/O showcased the recent fruitions of Google’s AI ambitions. As the company revealed the plans for its products in the coming year, it became readily apparent that integrating AI into everything was the name of the game.

Making Google Assistant More Human

Google’s AI-powered voice assistant is getting a small internal makeover to better fit into household dynamics. For example, the product received a “continued conversation” update, which eliminates the need to keep saying “OK, Google” before every interaction you have with the Assistant. This will hopefully create a more seamless conversational-style experience for families.

Another feature the company plans to roll out is the ability to ask multiple queries in one sentence like a person would naturally do. The Assistant will also remember past questions and answers for faster retrieval. Google will offer six new voices, including that of famous songwriter John Legend.

Google took a page out of Amazon’s plans for their Echo Dot Kids Edition; the company plans to add a “Pretty Please” feature, which kids can use to improve their manners. When you say “please” with your question, the Assistant will compliment you and respond back politely.

The scariest feature being released for the Assistant is the Duplex — it makes calls on your behalf, and it sounds extremely human, to the point where Google added “umm”s and “uhh”s into the robot AI’s speech pattern. This has caught quite a bit of negative press, and Google is taking the criticism in stride to make a product more palatable to the public.

Google Photos and Google Lens

Google Photos and Google Lens are receiving new built-in editing tools, like greyscale photo colorization, brightness correction, rotation suggestions, and other quick-fix recommendations. Make no mistake, Google is using our photos to improve its visual search and AI algorithms, but it also works in the background to edit your photos, create movies and collages, and organize albums automatically.

Photos will also offer to spot your friends in images, convert images into PDFs, and spot color or spot greyscale any of your photos. The company developed this mobile app to entice new users to use their photo-editing services over other competitors.

Google Lens will offer a new feature where you can highlight and select text from an image, whether it’s in a book or a street sign. Another new addition is “Style Match”, where Google uses object recognition and machine learning to find styles and accessories that are similar to a photo you have taken.

A Deep Focus on AI

The company is rebranding its Google Research Division into Google AI. Google is prioritizing research and development on the fields of neural networks, natural language processing, and computer vision. As customized hardware for AI takes off, the company is also hard at work on their third-generation TPU (tensor processing unit). CEO Sundar Pichai says the newest TPU is eight times more powerful than the last version.

Google is also focusing on continuously improving its TensorFlow software in addition to optimizing the TPU hardware. It released a new machine learning software development kit for iOS and Android developers. The models support face recognition, text detection, barcode scanning, image labeling, and recognition of landmarks and prominent buildings.

Google Maps

Google plans to add AI, in the form of its Google Assistant, into its Maps app. Assistant will give better recommendations to users. Google combined the phone’s camera with computer vision to incorporate augmented reality (AR) into street-view maps. The AR will add arrows to street view to show you where to turn left or right, and the camera integration gives Maps an edge over Apple Maps or Waze.

Google News

The tech titan’s news platform will integrate with other Google services to create a more cohesive subscription experience for users who follow free and paid RSS feeds. Leveraging AI could give Facebook a run for its money.

Android P

The newest version of Android, dubbed “Android P”, wants you to spend more time outside and with your loved ones. The updates to the mobile operating system will let you set controls for limited screen time, information on how to use your phone, and turn on “shush” mode to silence your phone during quality time.

The company is also beginning to transition Android to become usable on phones that have no buttons. Multitasking will be easier because virtual buttons can understand multiple gestures.

Google’s Game Plan

Google’s making a lot of changes, and most of them center around improving user experience with AI. This coming year is shaping up to be a busy one for the search engine giant. It will be exciting to see the end result from all of these endeavors.

The company is on a mission to make its name synonymous with ‘AI.’ If all goes well this year, it may achieve exactly that.

As tech companies integrate new developments in artificial intelligence (AI) into their products and voice assistants, public backlash is to be expected. Often, these large companies don’t consult with “regular consumers” before proceeding to build out nearly the whole product.

This can result in missteps during the release that could have easily been avoided if approached from the perspective of an actual user. One such new product is Google’s Duplex.

Is AI Too Human Already?

The Duplex is an AI assistant that can make calls for you. It was the big reveal of this year’s Google’s I/O developer conference held in Mountain View, right outside of San Francisco. It uses DeepMind’s new WaveNet audio-generation technique, amongst other technologies, to create a very realistic, human-sounding voice. The company went as far as to add “umm” and “uhh” into the flow of speech like a normal human would during a conversation.

The technology gives a new meaning to “robocalls”; without regulation, AI can and will evolve rapidly to become something out of a dystopian scifi movie. In a blog post written by two Google engineers working on the Duplex, Yaniv Leviathan and Yossi Matias emphasize, “It’s important to us that users and businesses have a good experience with this service, and transparency is a key part of that. We want to be clear about the intent of the call so businesses understand the context.”

The Duplex isn’t ready to be released just yet, and after the conference, Google may have a few other aspects to iron out. The demo has caused the general public to feel more uncomfortable than impressed. Mainstream consumers were disturbed that the Duplex didn’t identify itself as a robot before proceeding to have a conversation with a human. This type of deception and trickery definitely needs to be kept in check.

Treading the Uncanny Valley

After the public outcry, Google released a statement that clarified that they “understand and value the discussion around Google Duplex—as we’ve said from the beginning, transparency in the technology is important. We are designing this feature with disclosure built-in, and we’ll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I/O was an early technology demo, and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.”

The company hopes to use Duplex to lower language barriers, promote time away from our devices, and safeguard against spam calls. But to do that, Google will have to strike the right balance between human and machine with their new innovation.