The assistant that answers your questions now makes your phone calls — navigating menus, waiting on hold, and announcing itself as AI before the conversation begins.
September 26, 2026 — Google has begun rolling out "Call for Me," a new Gemini-powered feature that lets the assistant phone local businesses on a user's behalf, working through automated menus, sitting on hold, and reporting back with prices and availability. The feature is debuting as an early experiment on the Pixel 11 series inside the Phone app, and Google says it will expand to more devices later this year.
Image: An AI assistant placing a business call from a smartphone. Credit: Red Eye Eagle News / AI-generated illustration.
Editor's Highlight: Call for Me is the most ambitious version yet of a years-long Google project — an AI assistant that doesn't just find information but does the tedious phone work itself. The guardrails (AI self-identification, no payments, no passwords) suggest Google learned the lessons of the Duplex backlash and is now shipping the feature it demoed nearly a decade ago.
Table of Contents
- Editor's Highlight
- Key Facts
- From 'Ask for Me' to 'Call for Me'
- How the Feature Works in Practice
- The Self-Identification Rule
- What It Won't Do: Payments and Passwords
- A Decade in the Making, From Duplex Onward
- Bottom Line
- FAQ
- Sources
Key Facts
| Detail | Information |
| Feature | "Call for Me" — Gemini places real phone calls to businesses on a user's behalf |
| Launch status | Early experiment; began rolling out September 25, 2026 |
| Devices | Pixel 11 series first; more devices expected later in 2026 |
| Requirements | United States, 18 or older, Phone app (public beta), paid Google AI tier |
| Capabilities | Navigates phone menus, waits on hold, checks prices and availability |
| Transparency | Gemini identifies itself as an AI assistant at the start of each call |
| Blocked actions | No payments, no passwords, no sensitive account changes |
From 'Ask for Me' to 'Call for Me'
Call for Me is an expansion of "Ask for Me," which Google introduced in May 2025. Ask for Me let Gemini look up service pricing and availability — for things like event tickets, auto repair shops, and nail salons — without the user lifting the phone. Call for Me goes the final step: it actually places the call.
In one demonstration, Google showed Gemini calling an auto body shop to get a repair estimate for a customer, working through the shop's phone system and returning the quoted price. The feature is also aimed at the most universally despised phone task: waiting on hold with an airline, a chore Google is explicitly positioning Call for Me against.
The timing is deliberate. The feature lands with the Pixel 11 lineup, Google's flagship phones for the 2026 cycle, as the company continues to make Gemini's agentic capabilities the central selling point of its hardware.
Newsroom Focus: Watch the expansion timeline. Google said more devices will get Call for Me later this year — the jump from one phone family to the wider Android ecosystem is where this feature either becomes ubiquitous or stays a demo.
How the Feature Works in Practice
The experience lives inside the Phone app. A user types or speaks a request — for example, "call around and find out what an oil change costs" — and Gemini takes it from there. The assistant places the call from the user's device, handles the automated menu, waits through hold music, and keeps a live transcript of the conversation visible on screen so the user can follow along.
Crucially, the user stays in the loop: you can take over the call at any point by picking up the conversation yourself. And if Gemini gets stuck — an unusual menu, an uncooperative receptionist, a question it can't answer — it hands the call back and asks the user to take over rather than improvising its way forward.
According to reporting on the rollout, the feature appears to be powered by Gemini's conversational voice capabilities, building on the same agentic calling technology Google has been refining since the Duplex era.
The Self-Identification Rule
Every Call for Me conversation opens with disclosure: Gemini identifies itself as an AI assistant and says it is calling on behalf of the user. The business on the other end is told, up front, that it is talking to an automated system, not a person.
This is the direct answer to the controversy that surrounded Google Duplex in 2018, when the company's now-famous demo of an AI booking a hair appointment drew criticism because the assistant did not clearly identify itself as a machine. Google added disclosure requirements after that backlash — and Call for Me ships with them built in from day one.
Analysis Note: The disclosure is not just an ethical nicety; in several U.S. states, laws require that callers disclose automated calling. Building self-identification into the product keeps Google on the safe side of a patchwork of state regulations — and may be the precondition that lets this feature exist at all.
What It Won't Do: Payments and Passwords
Google has drawn hard lines around the feature's limits. Call for Me cannot be used for payments — the assistant won't hand over your credit card — and it can't handle passwords or other credentials. Sensitive account changes are out of bounds.
The guardrails are enforced by design: the feature is meant for information-gathering calls (prices, hours, availability, booking inquiries), not transactions. Combined with the take-over mechanism, the model is clear: Gemini does the boring legwork, and the human steps in for anything that matters.
Availability is also constrained for now: the experiment is limited to the United States, requires users to be 18 or older, needs the Phone app's public beta, and sits behind a paid Google AI subscription tier — putting the agentic assistant behind the paywall as Google builds the business case for its AI services.
A Decade in the Making, From Duplex Onward
The lineage here is unmistakable. At Google I/O 2018, the company stunned the industry with Duplex, an AI that could call restaurants and book tables with eerily natural speech, complete with "ums" and "ahs." Duplex eventually shipped in limited form, but never became the everyday product the demo promised.
Call for Me looks like the spiritual successor — more capable, more constrained, and more transparent. Where Duplex was a party trick that provoked unease, Call for Me is positioned as a productivity feature: an errand-runner for the exact tasks people hate doing. Phone trees and hold queues are arguably the perfect use case for AI — nobody enjoys them, and they're already automated on the business side.
The competitive stakes are real. Apple, Samsung, and others are all racing to make their assistants agentic — able to take multi-step actions across apps and services. Google's bet is that its telephony heritage, from Duplex to Hold for Me, gives it a head start on the one channel everyone forgot about: the plain old phone call.
Bottom Line
Call for Me is Google finally shipping the future it demoed in 2018 — an AI that does your phone chores, with disclosure built in and guardrails around anything sensitive. Starting on the Pixel 11 as a paid-tier experiment, it's a test of whether consumers trust an AI to speak for them. What to watch: the expansion to more devices, how businesses react to a surge of AI callers, and whether this becomes the feature that defines the agentic-assistant era — or just a very clever way to avoid hold music.
FAQ
What is Google's 'Call for Me' feature?
Call for Me is a Gemini-powered feature that places real phone calls to businesses on a user's behalf — navigating phone menus, waiting on hold, and checking prices or availability, then reporting back with a summary.
Which devices support Call for Me?
It is debuting as an early experiment on the Pixel 11 series inside the Phone app. Google says it will expand to more devices later in 2026. It is currently limited to the United States and requires users to be 18 or older.
Does Gemini identify itself as an AI on these calls?
Yes. Gemini identifies itself as an AI assistant at the start of each call and tells the business it is calling on behalf of the user.
Can Call for Me make payments or handle passwords?
No. Google blocks the feature from making payments or handling passwords and other credentials; it is designed for information-gathering calls such as pricing, hours, and availability.
What happens if Gemini gets stuck during a call?
The user can take over the call at any point, and Gemini will ask the user to step in if it encounters something it can't handle, rather than improvising.
Sources
- TechSpot — "Google Gemini can now call businesses for you," Sep 2026
- TechRepublic — "Google Gemini 'Call for Me' arrives on Pixel 11," Sep 2026
- HotHardware — coverage of Google's Call for Me rollout, Sep 2026
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