Google's talkative smart assistant is working hard to master the art of conversation, but not so it can trick us into thinking it's alive.

Google made headlines last week after its "Google Duplex" smart assistant seemingly passed the Turing Test on stage, fooling a restaurant owner into thinking it was a real person calling to book a table. Duplex relies in part on linguistic trickery, slipping "ums" and "ahs" into the conversation to help it sound more life-like.

While Duplex can pass as human during a short conversation about a very narrow topic, the full Google Assistant running on Google Home smart speakers doesn't aspire to seem alive. Instead, Google Assistant is brushing up on its social skills to become a better conversationalist, says Google Assistant vice president of engineering Scott Huffman.

"We all know the smart speaker sitting on your kitchen bench isn't a real person, so there's no reason for it to sound more human just for the sake of it," Huffman says.

"Instead we're focused on natural conversation with the goal of making talking to Google Assistant just as easy as talking to a real person; the less tedious the conversation the more likely people are to engage with it."