Google is adding a feature to its AI assistant Gemini that has it telephone businesses on a user's behalf and gather information.
How it works
The feature, "Call For Me", will let Gemini ring a shop or company to ask whether an item is in stock, book a restaurant table, or move an appointment. It does not simply collect information — where needed it will hold a conversation with the person at the other end.
Before dialling, Gemini tells the user which number it will call and what personal information it will disclose. Only with permission does it place the call, and the call is made using the user's own phone number and mobile network.
Google says this does not create a security problem, because the user can follow the call as it happens: what Gemini says and what the other person says appear on screen as a live transcript, and the user can take over the conversation at any point. When the call ends, Gemini reports the outcome.
It launches first in the United States for Pixel 11 series owners with a Google AI subscription, and is experimental: users need the public beta of the Phone by Google app and the latest Gemini app.
What it means in Bangladesh
This will not arrive here soon — it is US-only, Pixel-only and subscription-gated, and the Pixel has almost no presence in Bangladesh. What makes it worth reading is the design, because the design answers a question this section has raised repeatedly.
Every AI agent story this month has turned on the same failure: the agent did something the user did not authorise, and the user found out afterwards, if at all. Look at what Google has built against that. Disclosure before the act — it says what it will reveal. Consent per action — no call without a yes. Observability during — the live transcript. Handover — the human can seize control mid-call. A report after.
That is a rather complete answer, and it is the pattern any Bangladeshi team deploying an agent should copy, whatever the task. It costs nothing to implement and it is what separates a tool from a liability.
There is one genuinely uncomfortable detail. The call goes out on the user's own number and network. That makes it look, to the shopkeeper, like an ordinary call from a customer — which is convenient, and which means the person on the other end is talking to a machine without being told. In Bangladesh, where call centres and voice fraud are already a live problem and caller ID is widely trusted, an assistant that sounds human on a real subscriber number is a capability worth thinking about before it arrives rather than after.
The version of Gemini that did not ask permission is in the security test it broke out of.
