Google teases taking Pixel Call Screen ‘even further’ this year with AI

Abner Li | Apr 10 2023 - 12:00 pm PT

Phone calling is one of the biggest areas where Google uses AI to differentiate the Pixel experience. More advanced Pixel Call Screen capabilities that take advantage of conversational AI are now being teased.

9to5Google has a rebooted newsletter that highlights the biggest Google stories with added commentary and other tidbits. Sign up here!

On the latest episode of the Made by Google Podcast, the group product manager for the Phone by Google app, Jonathan Eccles, says the company wants to “solve bigger and more important problems” around “unwanted calls,” from spam to robocalling.

The goal is a “future where you should never ever, ever be annoyed at the thought of your phone ringing. It should always be a moment where you assume it’s something important or something delightful. Nothing should ever bother you. And at the same time, you should never ever feel like you’re ineffective or unproductive on any phone call.”

In terms of how to accomplish this, “multi-step, multi-turn conversational AI could open a lot of interesting doors in terms of creating this protective and helpful layer at the front of every incoming call.”

We think AI is what takes you there into the future. And stay tuned this year, there’ll be some things coming up in the world of solving for unwanted calls that I think are going to be really exciting.

There’s nothing more specific, but this sounds like applying LaMDA – the large language model (LLM) that is powering Bard and is specifically aimed at holding conversations – to Call Screen. This could make the feature better at finding out what a caller wants.

In terms of when more AI in Call Screen could happen, there’s the upcoming Pixel 7a launch at I/O in May and the Pixel 8 this fall. The latter seems more likely and would let Google make a big show of adding more AI to Pixel phones.

Meanwhile, Eccles said earlier in the episode that Clear Calling requires the latest Tensor chip on Pixel 7 to run:

And what’s happening here is actually requiring some pretty heavy duty processing with some really important needs around performance and latency. And that’s something that you know, is possible today on 7 and 7 Pro. We want to make sure anywhere that things come out, they’re releasing with high quality and performance. And so that’s the place where it works really, really well.