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Google AI

Google's AI Can Now Make Phone Calls (theverge.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Google will now let everyone in the US call local businesses using AI. The feature, which is now available in Search, allows you to use AI for pricing or availability information without having to talk on the phone.

Google first started testing this feature in January, and it's still only available for certain kinds of businesses, like pet groomers, dry cleaners, and auto shops. When you search for one of these services, like a pet groomer, Google will display a new "have AI check pricing" prompt beneath the business listing.

Google's AI Can Now Make Phone Calls More | Reply

Google's AI Can Now Make Phone Calls

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  • small business (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @01:36PM (#65525038)

    Small businesses that get a lot of these calls will revolt quickly. Google can try to force them to feed the machine but its not going to work well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      Also, how anti-social do you have to be to want this feature?

      • Re:small business (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @01:43PM (#65525058)

        I would love to have an AI call every middle manager or up at google every 20 seconds and ask when they plan to implement customer support phone lines.

        • I would love to have an AI call every middle manager or up at google every 20 seconds and ask when they plan to implement customer support phone lines.

          Google has customer support lines for paid services. Forcing them to provide customer support for free services would just force them to begin charging for those services.

          • I would love to have an AI call every middle manager or up at google every 20 seconds and ask when they plan to implement customer support phone lines.

            Google has customer support lines for paid services. Forcing them to provide customer support for free services would just force them to begin charging for those services.

            Given how much money they are making off those "free" services they would provide customer service and still make bank if forced.

          • Yes. But they really should have some support for the free services too. Otherwise you can't get bugs fixed. I had to subscribe to Google storage just to be able to report 4 bugs in the drive for Windows app, that essentially make it unusable for very large files.
            I submitted tons of logs, data, and so on, about two weeks ago, and as far as I can tell it did not make it to engineering. My free trial is going to end. I have a note to cancel it if no one gets back to me about these bugs by that date. I will th

      • Also, how anti-social do you have to be to want this feature?

        Reminds me of the segment of Gallagher's - "Ever meet the son of a bitch at the courtesy desk?" Yes, I don't like having to call for something as simple as getting a price for a commodity item.

        Personally, if I have to call to find out what their price is, I'll just keep looking for someone that isn't afraid to be open and transparent on their pricing. I figure that I won't be happy as their customer and they won't be happy having my curmudgeonly ass as a client. The only reason they want your contact is so

        • Personally, if I have to call to find out what their price is, I'll just keep looking for someone that isn't afraid to be open and transparent on their pricing.

          Do you own a dog? The answer to "how much do you charge to groom my dog?" is invariably "it depends". How dirty is the dog? Any matting? Any behavioural issues? How big? How old? The list goes on. Groomers are just one of a number of businesses who can't use flat pricing.

      • Also, how anti-social do you have to be to want this feature?

        My anecdotal evidence tells me there's a non negligible amount of people who don't like to talk to strangers on the phone. However I'm likewise assured there's a negligible amount of businesses that don't have an email address or a webform so I'm a bit puzzled as to why someone would opt to use an AI caller.

        • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

          by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
          People (at least in the US) have turned into utter asozials after the Great COVwardic Freakout of 2020.

        • "who don't like to talk to strangers on the phone. "

          Most people don't even want to speak to friends and family members on a phone.

          Phone's time is over, write a goddamn message that I can reply when I have time and actually want to.

      • I don't think it's anti-socialness that's stopping people from doing so, I think it's experience of getting pushy salespeople, rarely getting a straight answer, and feeling pissed that the price list isn't online somewhere.

        Which is why, ultimately, I think this service is going to fail anyway. Because it'll experience the same thing that stops normal people from calling. There's no reason to suppose the AI will get a straight, honest, answer that isn't couched in "we'll discuss all the options when you get

        • I don't think it's anti-socialness that's stopping people from doing so, I think it's experience of getting pushy salespeople, rarely getting a straight answer, and feeling pissed that the price list isn't online somewhere.

          Which is why, ultimately, I think this service is going to fail anyway. Because it'll experience the same thing that stops normal people from calling. There's no reason to suppose the AI will get a straight, honest, answer that isn't couched in "we'll discuss all the options when you get here" and so on.

          It occurs to me that there's one important difference: Investment. If they won't give me a straight answer but I've invested several minutes of my time in talking to them I might give in to their crap process. If I haven't invested that time, though, just gotten a report from the AI caller that they won't answer unless I come in, I won't feel like I've wasted my time if I just give them a miss.

          On the other side, businesses might find that giving the AI the runaround is ineffective, because of the lack

        • " There's no reason to suppose the AI will get a straight, honest, answer that isn't couched in "we'll discuss all the options when you get here" and so on."

          The AI can go on and on and on and waste their time and money and then after having hung up, call again with a different voice for the same thing, rinse and repeat.

          • The AI can go on and on and on and waste their time and money and then after having hung up, call again with a different voice for the same thing, rinse and repeat.

            Google and many others are selling the AI to answer phone calls and email, so it's all good.

      • Also, how anti-social do you have to be to want this feature?

        About as anti-social as I am. I hate talking on the phone. Given the choice between calling some business to ask about their pricing or just not using their service, I'll do the latter every time. What I really prefer is that they put their pricing on their web site. Then neither of us have to be bothered. If they don't want to do that and would like my business, though, they should appreciate the AI calls, because with that feature I just might buy from them. Without it, I almost certainly will not.

        • Ditto. I could have written your post.

          If a company can't manage something as basic as conveying simply pricing in a straight forward manner, I'll look for one that can.

          I recently went to a lumbar yard expecting to buy $20K in lumber. No prices on anything. I went elsewhere.

          • What is even more infuriating is when they literally say "Call for pricing." That almost certainly means they're either going to be overly pushy, or they're going to try to screw me over. You know, "adjusting" the price because of how much they perceive they can bilk me for.

          • Ditto. I could have written your post.

            If a company can't manage something as basic as conveying simply pricing in a straight forward manner, I'll look for one that can.

            I recently went to a lumbar yard expecting to buy $20K in lumber. No prices on anything. I went elsewhere.

            Of course they didn't have wood, that is a back store.

            Hal Kitzmiller: I buy all my furniture at an ergonomics store.
            Elaine Benes: Oh, those places have the stupidest names, like Back in Business or Good Vertebrations.
            Hal Kitzmiller: Not this one. It's called the Lumbar Yard.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Also, how anti-social do you have to be to want this feature?

        More like stupid. Because this is just one more bad idea in the increasingly panicked search for actual applications for generative AI.

    • Small businesses that get a lot of these calls will revolt quickly. Google can try to force them to feed the machine but its not going to work well.

      I suspect they will quickly sour on them as I could see it overwhelm a small business, not just from legitimate queries but from people using it to jam up a business' line for laughs or revenge for some perceived slight. At least Google lets businesses opt out; although it should really be opt in but then Google would need to convince them to use it rather than force them to say no.

      • It will be about five minutes before someone is using this thing to do bullshit like prank call doctor offices to ask for pricing estimates for things like penile enlargement.

    • While I agree. I don't know what a small business is going to do. Are they just going to hang up when anyone asks about times or prices?

    • Small businesses that get a lot of these calls will revolt quickly. Google can try to force them to feed the machine but its not going to work well.

      It's just automating telemarketing in its various forms, it's not really anything new. Its not like these calls were welcomed when they were human based.

    • The AI agent making an appointment for you is just a smokescreen. Email or text or web already can deal with many appointments, voice adds little. The real goal here is to automate telemarketing, Well, further automate. To move from a bunch of pre-recorded responses. More flexibility.

      Trying to get a hallucinated response might be a new game or challenge for folks receiving an AI based calls. :-)

      • What if some clever business owner can recognize the incoming AI call, and answer with an interesting prompt? Could the AI eat itself?

    • I hope this will only mean that Google AI verminator numbers are blocked, not that businesses will give up their phone lines period. I much prefer calling up and e.g. ordering food to pick up for cash, not using Grubhub or Uber Shits. God damn technology. Ludd! Dudd! Luddududd!

    • Small businesses that get a lot of these calls will revolt quickly. Google can try to force them to feed the machine but its not going to work well.

      Surely they'll save the answer and not call a second time for the same question. How many questions could there be for a dry cleaner?

    • Small businesses that get a lot of these calls will revolt quickly. Google can try to force them to feed the machine but its not going to work well.

      #2 Google AI answering machine
      #3 Profit!

    • Small businesses that get a lot of these calls will revolt quickly. Google can try to force them to feed the machine but its not going to work well.

      They should respond by putting the information on the web, so people don't have to ask.

  • I've been getting calls that are clearly an AI instead of a human. They have even changed tactics a bit. I somehow know immediately, maybe a bit too perfect in the voice. But I get it as soon as it speaks. I respond with "Hello AI". The response is usually stupid, and had been falling back to a "I'm having problems with my headset" and it hangs up as I continue to call it an AI. The new tactic seems to fall over to an actual human, and I cuss them out for using an AI, and then they hang up. Enshitification

    • Once you get the actual human, 1000Hz tone at max volume. Or play a "numbers station" just to confuse the shit out of them...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Once you get the actual human, 1000Hz tone at max volume.

        That is a really stupid suggestion, because that counts as felony assault. Usually they will not go though with a criminal complaint, but if they do you may go to jail.

  • Damn, so much for my telemarketing career. Good thing I have web page development as a backup, I had that Learn to Code class. :-)

  • If you ever make a chatbot call me, you're SOOO out of my addressbook forever. Telemarketers are annoying enough to get deal with without having to deal with Google AI robocalls on top of it.

  • I want an AI that can navigate through automated voice response systems and alert me when a live person is ready to talk to me

  • Sounds like they want businesses to use AI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mick232 ( 1610795 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2025 @02:11PM (#65525142)
    for answering these calls. That's where they want to make profit.
  • What keeps me from war dialing "do you know your refrigerator is running"?

  • I'm glad to find out that the crapflood apocalypse won't be limited to online banter. Now my voicemail can be inundated with it too. Not that the non-stop "Your car's warranty is about to expire" and "We're just waiting on your final details to issue you your 50K dollar loan" voicemails were getting lonely or anything, but hey, gotta use up that capacity somehow.

  • The headset is standard equipment for all our employees.

    "What about this badge?"

    You want me to explain the need for a badge.

    "Well, why does it say A. I'm with stupid

    "Who gave you that badge? Let me guess...did he say he was from HR?"

  • AI will probably go down as the greatest waste(s) of human time of any technology, ever. From AI slop bug reports to AI slop social media posts, we're all gonna end up hating each other while a relative few malevolent goons crank out AI slop on an industrial scale. Now small businesses can't even answer the phone without risking getting slopped. Good thing capitalism is on track to kill itself with it's own waste heat.

  • Every week, they come up with yet another bullshit reason for using AI, in an attempt to convince people that this is some kind of must have technology.

    Question: who the fuck asked for this?

    Answer: not a single fucking person.

  • I used Google's "AI" system a few months ago to have it make a simple reservation for three at a restaurant because I didn't want to wait on hold. It reported back that the reservation was confirmed and gave me all the info.

    When we arrived they had absolutely no record of a reservation at that time under any name. Perfect.

  • That is basically the only good use for this "feature".

  • I was so concerned with the drop in automated calls.

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