Thursday saw the announcement of a new feature called Call for Me, an experimental beta addition to the Pixel 11 handsets in the US. It gives Google’s Gemini the ability to make calls on behalf of users through their Pixel phones. This marks the second such attempt from the company, following the older Google Assistant’s Duplex, which could book tables at restaurants before being discontinued.
To use Pixel 11, you need a Gemini subscription and enrollment in the Phone by Google app’s public beta. Google has instructions on how to join here. The calls are intended for businesses, not individuals.
How Call for Me Works
You can instruct Gemini to contact your local hardware store and ask whether a certain tool is available, or speak with a barber to arrange a haircut. Once you give the assistant the instruction to make the call, it might ask follow-up questions to gather additional context. After that, it introduces itself and engages in a back-and-forth conversation with the other party to make sure your request is properly addressed.
Gemini can work its way through automated phone menus and even sit idle while waiting on hold. You see a live transcript of what it hears on the Pixel, and you can step in and take control at any point. Its voice matches the one used in Gemini Live conversations, though your chosen Gemini voice might carry an accent.
Google says Call for Me works best with businesses, but there are some places it will not call. Emergency services are off-limits. You can ask Gemini to call specific numbers, though. A Google spokesperson tells WIRED that if your tattoo artist does not have much of a web presence, “Gemini will try to search for a phone number, but you may provide one as well,”.
The Existing Calling Features
The app builds on existing calling features found within the Phone app, including call screening and robocall blocking. Hold for Me watches for the moment the hold music stops and a live person answers, then alerts you to take the call. Direct My Call shows the menu choices before the automated system says them aloud, letting you tap nine to get through to a live person without sitting through the full recording.
Alerts come up instantly if the app senses a scammer on the other end of your conversation.
The Problems With Automated Calls
Today, voice assistants answering phone calls have become somewhat more widely accepted than they were during the Duplex era. Yet these features frequently come up short when faced with the unpredictable nature of real calls, where the person on the other end might simply hang up, mistaking the automated voice for yet another spam call.
Whether Gemini can actually recognize accents is doubtful, and that raises serious concerns. If it fails to grasp a customer’s way of speaking, will it keep asking them to repeat their words over and over again? Then there is the matter of what happens when the shop has no item a customer wants. Does the bot know how to end the exchange without offending anyone, or does it simply break off the conversation abruptly?
“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 cannot accommodate your needs.
What This Means for Business Calls
Robots could eventually handle these kinds of business phone calls entirely on their own. Companies are already testing AI tools for customer contact. One local California pizza chain, Pizza My Heart, lets customers text its Jimmy the Surfer chatbot to place an order.
Before long, it appears you will be able to tell your device to reach out to a restaurant, and that establishment’s own artificial intelligence will reply. At present, however, the two systems are merely arguing over whether you would prefer the stuffed edge.
Key Facts Box
- Feature: Call for Me, an experimental beta
- Devices: Pixel 11 in the US
- Languages: English only
- Requires: Gemini subscription and Phone app public beta enrollment
- Announced: Thursday
- Previous attempt: Duplex, shut down a few years ago
Our View
The concept is a promising one, though it remains a work in progress. Google is correct that user testing of a wide range of scenarios will aid in refining the feature, particularly when it comes to accents and noisy settings. Yet the concerns raised by WIRED are genuine.
Unexpected behavior marks phone conversations. Some people cut off the call, while machines sometimes fail to grasp what was said. Gemini is a machine built to make cold calls for you instead.
The machines are talking. The question is whether they are listening.
Source material: “Google’s Gemini Can Now Make Calls for You on Pixel Phones,” WIRED.
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