Google's New 'Ask for Me' Search Feature Uses AI to Make Calls

[MacRumors]

Google today started rolling out a new experimental "Ask for Me" feature that's available as part of Search Labs. Google Search users can take advantage of AI to make calls to businesses for information like pricing and availability.

As of now, Google is testing the experimental feature with auto shops and nail salons, and it is designed to prevent users from having to place calls themselves. Businesses can opt out of the AI-based calls, and the feature does disclose that AI is being used at the beginning of a call.

To use Ask for Me, Google Search users can opt-in to Search Labs and then search for a phrase like "oil change near me" or "manicure near me" to test it out. There are capacity limits in place, so there could be a waitlist before a call can be placed.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1885006631752364249

Google says that the feature uses some of the underlying technology used for making restaurant reservations through the Google Search and Google Maps apps.

Article Link: Google's New 'Ask for Me' Search Feature Uses AI to Make Calls

 

[everlast3434]

So we're going to have AIs calling us now? Lovely.

 

[Wanted797]

I envision businesses just hanging up on this AI.

 

[Wanted797]

The irony of those options is they could just be ab online booking form and you then pick an available slot…

 

[AlexStudios]

…What could possibly go wrong?

 

[garotemonkey]

Google today started rolling out a new experimental "Ask for Me" feature that's available as part of Search Labs. Google Search users can take advantage of AI to make calls to businesses for information like pricing and availability.

As of now, Google is testing the experimental feature with auto shops and nail salons, and it is designed to prevent users from having to place calls themselves. Businesses can opt out of the AI-based calls, and the feature does disclose that AI is being used at the beginning of a call.

To use Ask for Me, Google Search users can opt-in to Search Labs and then search for a phrase like "oil change near me" or "manicure near me" to test it out. There are capacity limits in place, so there could be a waitlist before a call can be placed.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1885006631752364249

Google says that the feature uses some of the underlying technology used for making restaurant reservations through the Google Search and Google Maps apps.

Article Link: Google's New 'Ask for Me' Search Feature Uses AI to Make Calls

Welcome to the future, where you no longer ask the question “how do I reach a human?” when you’re trying to get support from a company.

Instead, you ask a robot, and some other robot goes and interrogates a human, if it decides to, as a last resort.

By degrees, we are all being divided from each other, into dark, silent, managed boxes, with every image and word we see and say and hear arbitrated and filtered by automated systems working tirelessly on the behalf of the powerful and the rich. But hey, it’s worth it for “goods and services” and endless scrolls of facile entertainment, right? Other humans are scary and weird. Google never asks you difficult questions…

 

[KENESS]

This sounds... horrible.

 

[Capeto]

If I get a phone call telling me it's AI, I'm hanging up right there and then.

 

[phgreer]

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard!!! Most place won't pick up the phone or just give it to the new employee as a new kid joke

 

[9081094]

I hope it comes to the Netherlands as well. I can take revenge on those telemarketing companies that took advantage of me before a law took action to forbid it. 😂

 

[AeroEd]

businesses now have to invest in AI that can answer questions from AI Representing clients or future clients

 

[dannyyankou]

What’s wrong with just leaving a voicemail? If I worked for one of these businesses, I’d ignore these robocalls.

 

[Jack Burton]

I've used AI to screen calls, and for that it works wonderfully to stop sales people from getting through during the work day. I had a few send emails that they couldn't get past my google assistant, lol. My hunch is that a sales person isn't going to want to talk to an AI, though.

 

[cjsuk]

Oh now we ruin the telephone system with the AI arms race too.

This is utterly stupid.

 

[gaximus]

If I get a phone call telling me it's AI, I'm hanging up right there and then.

This is a good way to loose business. I absolutely hate talking on the phone. If I can't find the info I need on the site, then I go to the next business. This will allow businesses that don't have modern systems to handle questions and bookings like it is a modern site.

 

[mansplains]

The AI will call and get the machine, and they’ll converse with each other. Dead phone theory!

 

[centauratlas]

This sounds like the reverse of phone tree hell. Instead of customers having to navigate through 15 levels of menus and options to try and get a person or an answer, the AI does it for you and lets them have to deal with it.

Maybe business will put more useful info in the web site and/or make it easier to get info by phone since they are now the ones dealing with it vs us.

 

[Dr McKay]

I envision businesses just hanging up on this AI.

I would be hanging up the instant I got a whiff of any AI voice.

 

[jz0309]

Google is testing the experimental feature with auto shops and nail salons,

most nail salons afaik are small business owners, wonder if Google asked for their opinion about this? Bet you no ...

 

[TheDadGuitar]

Piling on - f I'm a business owner and I get an AI call it's a hang-up and instablock.

 

[Eureka20]

I loathe businesses who are too cheap to have real human customer service. No way in hell am I gonna turn around and use the same garbage to be that lazy. This looks like a disaster waiting to happen.

 

[SMH4KIDIOT]

I don't think some of you understand how crazy and amazing this is as an end user. I just asked it to find an auto shop that does electrical work on cars, find out the quote for diagnostics and availability. It called 6 shops around me to find out all those information and sent me a summary text for each auto shop.

This is fantastic. removes the hassle of calling all those places myself and saved me time.

 

[Makosuke]

So companies are, or will soon, be using AI agents to answer the phone when customers call, and now other companies are making AI agents to call companies and ask questions for customers, thus it's only a matter of time before we have massive amounts of technology to generate voices, interpret speech, generate language, and parse responses so two huge datacenters can communicate via a natural-language voice call to figure out if a business can work on your car next week.

It's like launching an F35 off an aircraft carrier to fly to and land on another aircraft carrier to deliver a note on a piece of paper--you literally could not come up with a less efficient way of doing the job.

Or, y'know, they could put their schedule online and you could do it yourself in one tenth the time using a frickin' web page, like back in the late 1990s when we already solved this problem.

 

[baryon]

And the "person" answering the phone will also soon be an AI so you'll have AIs talking to AIs about things that could have been Googled.

 

[ArPe]

I don't think some of you understand how crazy and amazing this is as an end user. I just asked it to find an auto shop that does electrical work on cars, find out the quote for diagnostics and availability. It called 6 shops around me to find out all those information and sent me a summary text for each auto shop.

This is fantastic. removes the hassle of calling all those places myself and saved me time.

‘You saved time’ is really selfish. You didn’t think about the businesses.

You know what else happened?

Another 100 people did the same thing and really annoyed those shops.

That’s what happens when you use automated robocalls. Businesses get flooded with spammy like communications.