Google has been trying to have its AI assistant make phone calls on your behalf for almost 10 years. Remember Duplex? It enabled the now-defunct Google Assistant to call restaurants and book tables. That service was shuttered a few years ago, but now comes round two, powered by modern large language models.
On Thursday, Google announced Call for Me, an experimental beta feature exclusive to its latest Pixel 11 smartphones in the US (and in English). Pixel 11 owners need a Gemini subscription and have to be enrolled in the Phone by Google app’s public beta. Google has instructions on how to participate here.
These calls are designed to reach businesses. Gemini can call your local hardware store to ask if they stock a specific tool, or chat with a barber to schedule a haircut. Just tell Gemini to make the call—it may ask you follow-up questions for more context—and the chatbot will introduce itself and can have a back-and-forth conversation to ensure your request is handled. If it runs into an automated phone menu, it can navigate it and even wait on hold. On your end, you can view a live transcript on the Pixel and take over at any point.
Google says it works best with businesses, but there are some establishments Gemini won't call, like emergency services. That said, you can ask Gemini to call specific numbers. For example, if your tattoo artist doesn't have much of a web presence, “Gemini will try to search for a phone number, but you may provide one as well,” a Google spokesperson tells WIRED. During these calls, the assistant's voice will be the same one used in Gemini Live interactions, even if your preferred Gemini voice has an accent.
Call for Me expands on Google’s suite of smart calling features on Pixels and Android. The Phone app can already screen incoming calls and block robocalls and telemarketers. Hold for Me lets the assistant listen for when the hold music ends and a live person is on the other end; it alerts you to pick up the phone when it’s finally your cue. Direct My Call can display the different choices in an automated phone menu before they’re spoken, so you can tap nine to reach a live person and skip the recorded voice reading out the whole list. It even has real-time Scam Detection, alerting you when it thinks the person on the other end is scamming you.
But these kinds of features—much like hyped-up AI translation features—can often fall short. Calls are unpredictable, and the person on the other end may hang up, assuming it’s just another spam call. What happens if Gemini doesn’t understand a person’s accent all that well? Will it trap the clerk in an endless loop of asking them to repeat themselves? And if the shop doesn’t have the tool you need, does the bot know how to bow out politely—or just cut the line?
“That is exactly what we want to continue testing,” the Google spokesperson says. “With this experiment, we look forward to users testing a variety of cases, so that we can continue to improve the feature across accents and noisy environments.” And yes, Google says Gemini will “politely” hang up if the business can't accommodate your needs.
It still points to a future where robots may take over these kinds of business phone calls altogether. Businesses are also experimenting with artificial-intelligence tools to interface with customers, like local California pizza chain Pizza My Heart, which lets you text its Jimmy the Surfer chatbot to order pizza.
It doesn’t seem too far off that you’ll ask your phone to call a restaurant, and the restaurant’s AI will answer. The machines are talking to each other, except they’re just debating whether you want the stuffed crust.
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