Google is letting Gemini place phone calls to local businesses on a user's behalf, a feature called Call for Me that began rolling out on September 24 to paid Gemini subscribers on the Pixel 11 in the US. The agent dials the business from the user's own phone number, introduces itself, navigates automated menus, waits on hold, and then handles the conversation with whoever picks up. A live transcript runs on-screen throughout, and the user can take over the call at any moment.
The rollout is gated to Pixel 11 owners enrolled in the Phone by Google public beta, and Google is framing it as an early experiment rather than a general release. Gemini can share user-approved personal information during the call, which is what makes the agent capable of more than a scripted inquiry — it can reschedule an appointment, place an item on hold, book a table, or check whether a specific product is in stock at a specific store.
The demo Google is pitching is the everyday errand call that most people avoid: the ten-minute wait to change a reservation, the phone tree at a doctor's office, the call to a hardware store to confirm a part is on the shelf. Instead of dialing, a user tells Gemini in the app to make the call and specifies the ask. The agent takes it from there and surfaces the result.
Key facts
- 01Google launched Call for Me on September 24, 2026, letting Gemini place phone calls to local businesses on a user's behalf.
- 02The feature is limited to paid Gemini subscribers on Pixel 11 in the US who are enrolled in the Phone by Google public beta.
- 03Calls are dialed from the user's own phone number, and users can watch a live transcript and take over the conversation at any point.
- 04Gemini can share user-approved personal information during calls to handle tasks like reservations, stock checks, and rescheduling appointments.
- 05The launch follows Google's earlier Ask for Me feature from last year and arrives as Meta builds a similar calling capability into its Muse agent.
Google has been circling this capability for the better part of a decade. The company famously demonstrated Google Assistant booking a salon appointment at its I/O keynote years ago, complete with synthesized filler words. It shipped Hold for Me and Direct My Call on Pixel phones to navigate hold queues and IVR trees, and last year it launched Ask for Me, which let Gemini call businesses to inquire about pricing and services. Call for Me is the first version that lets the agent execute a transaction rather than just gather information, and the first that hands the user a real-time steering wheel.
The competitive frame is Meta, which announced a similar phone-calling capability for its Muse agent at Meta Connect 2026. Reporting on Muse's version suggests a human operator may be behind at least some of those calls, a workaround Google is not using here — Gemini is doing the talking. Meta's Muse rollout has been aggressive on the consumer surface, with the standalone Muse app climbing the App Store charts, but Google's advantage on Call for Me is distribution through Android and the Phone app on a device users already own.
The business case for AI-placed calls is straightforward. Small businesses still take a large share of consumer transactions over the phone — restaurants, medical offices, auto shops, home services — and their web presence is often too thin to support online booking. An agent that can bridge the phone gap turns a friction point into an API-like interaction for the user, without requiring the business on the other end to install anything. It is a rare AI feature where the value shows up in minutes saved on a task the user was already going to do.
There are constraints. The feature requires a paid Gemini subscription, a Pixel 11, a US location, and enrollment in the Phone app beta — a stack that excludes the vast majority of Android users on day one. Google has not said how Call for Me handles calls that go sideways: a business that asks for a credit card, a receptionist who refuses to speak to an AI, a call center that flags the number as automated. The company said it is starting small because "real-world conversations are nuanced," which is a fair summary of every failure mode a text-to-speech agent has ever hit on a live line.
The etiquette question is also unresolved. Google has not indicated whether Gemini identifies itself as an AI to the business it is calling, and jurisdictions vary on whether that disclosure is legally required. Businesses on the receiving end of an increasing volume of agent calls may start screening for them, the way they screen for robocalls today, which would erode the feature's usefulness before it scales.
For Google, the strategic point is that the phone call is one of the few consumer surfaces where an agent has a clear, bounded job with a measurable outcome. Booking a table either happens or it doesn't. That kind of legible success matters as Google, OpenAI, and Meta all race to prove that agents can do more than draft emails. Call for Me is a small feature in a narrow beta, but it is the shape of what a useful consumer AI agent actually looks like — one task, one clear win, and a hand-off when it gets stuck.
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