Sitting in an air-conditioned booth. Outside? Chaos. Heat. Overcrowded demo lanes at Google I/O.
I talked to a woman who wasn’t there.
She wasn’t just remote. She wasn’t human at all.
It was Google Beam. That HP-collab video screen thing we saw before as Project Starline. Usually you get a real person on the other side. Holographic-ish. Glass-free 3D presence. This time?
A video AI agent.
The demo was 2D. It didn’t need 3D to mess with my head.
Why? Because the woman on screen was photoreal. Deepfake quality. She smiled. Gestured. Spoke casually.
She didn’t have a name. I just talked.
I asked for a picture of myself performing magic tricks at a New York Jets stadium. She generated it. Instantly. Then she pointed at a prop banana on my table. Complimented my photographer’s backpack.
It felt natural. Too natural.
The agent pulled up maps. Searched locations. Gave recommendations while an employee guided the demo from the backend. But the face on the screen? It looked right at me. It moved its eyes. It nodded.
Is it helpful? Or just awkward?
Most of us have Zoom. Or Teams. Phone calls are fine.
Microsoft tried hard to make telepresence “real” in Teams. Now they’re walking back the heavy tech. They want simplicity. Google wants presence.
Andrew Nartker, Google Beam’s general manager, calls it an experiment. He’s not lying.
But experiments have endpoints.
Think theme parks. Disney’s Star Wars lands. What if that AI stood by the food stand? Greeted you in Galactic Basic while serving synth-juice?
Think hotels. Digital concierges that actually look like people.
Or worse?
Replaces concierges entirely. No staff. Just screens. A step up from the AI drive-through windows we’re starting to see.
I saw the magic. I felt the dread.
The Beam demo was the best part of Google I/O for me. Technically speaking. Emotionally? It was a wash.
We’re building faces for our bots. And we’re letting them smile first.
Where do they end up next?
Probably on your desk. Or at the front of a hotel lobby. Watching. Listening. Waiting for a prompt.
