Google testing a feature that lets Gemini make phone calls to businesses on your behalf

Google is preparing a new feature that could change the way we interact with local businesses over the phone. The company is testing an option that would let its Gemini assistant make calls on a user's behalf, handling basic conversations with various companies — from restaurant reservations to appointment bookings or simple questions about hours and prices.

Who gets first access

According to TechCrunch, this automated calling capability will initially be available exclusively to Pixel 11 owners in the United States, provided they have a paid Gemini subscription. It's a typical strategy for Google, which frequently uses premium feature launches to boost both hardware sales and subscriptions to its AI services.

No complete technical details have been offered yet on how Gemini will handle these calls — whether it will speak directly to a human employee or interact with automated IVR systems, and how the person on the other end will be informed that they're talking to an AI rather than a real person.

Implications for small businesses

For small and medium-sized businesses, this shift raises important questions. If more and more customers start delegating phone calls to an AI assistant, businesses may need to adapt their own call-handling systems to interact effectively with conversational bots, not just humans.

There's also a sensitive ethical dimension: transparency. Consumers and company representatives should clearly know when they're speaking with an artificial intelligence, especially in situations involving price negotiations or bookings that require personal details.

A broader industry trend

This move by Google fits into a wider trend in which major tech players are transforming voice assistants from simple responders into agents capable of autonomously carrying out complex tasks. The company hasn't yet specified a timeline for rolling out the feature beyond the US market or beyond the Pixel ecosystem, but the success of this initial test will likely determine how quickly that expansion happens.

It remains to be seen how both consumers and businesses will react to the prospect of phone conversations mediated entirely by algorithms.