Gemini can now call businesses for you so you don’t have to wait on hold
The Verge Stevie Bonifield ● Covered by 2 sources
Google’s Gemini can now call local businesses for Pixel 11 users. It waits on hold and handles the menu so you don’t have to.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Stevie Bonifield — read the original for the full story.
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Google is testing a new Gemini feature on Pixel 11 that turns phone calls into something you can hand off. The idea is simple: ask Gemini to call a local business for you, and it can take care of things like booking a reservation, checking stock, or moving an appointment.
What makes this feel different is that you don’t have to start the call yourself. In the Gemini app on your Pixel, you tell it to call on your behalf, and it places the call, introduces itself, gets through automated menus, waits on hold, and talks to the person who picks up.
Google says you stay in control while it’s doing the work. There’s a live transcript, so you can follow along as the conversation happens, which is a sensible safeguard for something that’s still an early experiment.
It’s a neat little preview of where assistants are headed: less answering questions, more doing the annoying admin humans hate. Hold music is still undefeated, but Google is clearly trying to make sure you hear less of it.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the kind of feature that sounds small until it saves someone from a 14-minute hold queue. But it also pushes another chunk of everyday life deeper into Google’s app-and-device stack, which is exactly how closed platforms keep winning by being useful first and sticky second. Convenience is the pitch; dependency is the business model.
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