Google tests letting Gemini call businesses for you

Google is giving Gemini a more hands-on role with a new experiment called “Call for Me.” The pitch is simple: the AI can place business calls on a user’s behalf and handle the awkward parts, from menu trees to long holds.

For now, the feature is limited. It will start with Pixel 11 owners in the U.S. who also pay for a Gemini subscription, and it needs the beta version of Google’s Phone app for Android. Google is treating this as an experiment, not a finished product, which makes sense given how messy phone calls can get.

The key change is that Gemini will be allowed to use personal information that the user approves for the call. Google says that opens the door to a wider set of actions. Users can also follow along live and step in whenever they want, with a transcript showing how the conversation is going.

Google says the AI can do real work here: ask whether a product is in stock, make a restaurant booking, move an appointment, or put items on hold. It uses the user’s own phone number, so the call is still coming directly from their phone. The system can also introduce itself, navigate automated menus, and wait for a human to pick up.

This is not a brand-new idea for Google. The company has spent years showing off and shipping phone-assistant features, from the old Google Assistant demo that called a salon with human-sounding pauses to earlier tools like “Ask for Me,” “Hold for Me,” “Talk to a Live Rep,” and “Direct My Call.” Google says it is moving slowly because real conversations are messy, which is the kind of sentence that usually means the demo looked better than the edge cases.