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Voice assistants handling phone calls is a little more accepted today than back in the Duplex days. Call screening features abound\u2014whether on a Pixel, Samsung, or iPhone, onboard assistants routinely intercept unknown callers to ask why they\u2019re calling.<\/p>\n
But these kinds of features\u2014much like hyped-up AI translation features\u2014can often fall short. Calls are unpredictable, and the person on the other end may hang up, assuming it\u2019s just another spam call. What happens if Gemini doesn\u2019t understand a person\u2019s accent all that well? Will it trap the clerk in an endless loop of asking them to repeat themselves? And if the shop doesn\u2019t have the tool you need, does the bot know how to bow out politely\u2014or just cut the line?<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is exactly what we want to continue testing,\u201d the Google spokesperson says. \u201cWith 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.\u201d And yes, Google says Gemini will \u201cpolitely\u201d hang up if the business can’t accommodate your needs.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t seem too far off that you\u2019ll ask your phone to call a restaurant, and the restaurant\u2019s AI will answer. The machines are talking to each other, except they\u2019re just debating whether you want the stuffed crust.<\/p>\n