Google is testing a feature called Call for Me that lets Gemini phone businesses on a user's behalf. The AI introduces itself, navigates automated phone menus, waits on hold and handles the conversation, while the user follows a live transcript and can take over at any point. It dials from the user's own phone number.

The test is limited to Pixel 11 owners in the United States who pay for a Gemini subscription and run the beta version of Google's Phone app. No word on when (if ever) it will make it to SA yet.

What is new here is permission, not calling. Google demonstrated an AI booking a salon appointment at its developer conference back in 2018, and Pixel phones have carried Hold for Me, Talk to a Live Rep and Direct My Call for years.

Last year's Ask for Me let Gemini ring businesses about pricing and services. The change is that Gemini can now share personal information the user approves during a call, which is what lets it do things rather than only ask things: checking stock, booking a table, moving an appointment, putting an item on hold. Google says it is deliberately starting small because real-world conversations are nuanced.

It also arrives alongside Meta's Muse and Instinct agents, which can already place calls for users, so this is a category forming rather than a single company's experiment.

TechCrunch's Sarah Perez traced the feature back through Google's earlier calling experiments and noted it builds on years of work rather than appearing from nowhere. Her coverage of Ask for Me in January 2025 covered the previous version, which could only enquire. Google's own support documentation sets out the existing Direct My Call and hold features that Pixel users already have.

South African businesses have spent this year deploying AI to answer their phones, from digital agents handling routing to the automation pressure sitting on the local BPO sector. This is the other end of the same line.

Fairly soon, a meaningful share of inbound calls to your business will be placed by software acting for a customer, and your systems are not built for that. An AI does not get frustrated by a phone tree, does not abandon a queue, and will happily hold for 40 minutes, which quietly removes the deterrent that long hold times have always provided.

There is also a verification problem forming. The standard scam advice is to hang up and call back on a number you already have, but a legitimate AI agent now calls from the customer's own number and sounds synthetic.

This is US-only on one handset, so nothing to do today. Worth deciding early whether you will let agents transact on a customer's behalf, because the answer shapes your phone systems.

You might also like our piece on the WhatsApp Business fees charging for every reply, the SA banking trojan reading one-time PINs off Android phones, and why SA enterprise AI adoption keeps outrunning its own strategy.

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