Rita El Khoury/Android Authority
TL; DR
- The Group Product Manager for Phone by Google appeared on the Made by Google Podcast.
- The product manager said that Google is looking forward to solving the problem of spam calls.
- I teased that the solution could include conversational AI.
From robocalls to spam, spam calls are a disaster that plagues most phone owners. Fortunately, things like the Pixel’s Call Screen feature help mitigate this annoyance. And it seems that Google is looking to further improve this feature in the near future with the help of conversational AI.
As he discovered it 9to5GoogleJonathan Eccles, Group Product Manager for Phone by Google, appeared on the latest episode of the Made by Google Podcast. During the presentation, Eccles talked about how the company wanted to resolve issues with unwanted calls.
During the podcast, Eccles mentioned that he wants to:
A future where you never have to be bothered by the thought of your phone ringing. There should always be a moment where you assume it’s something important or something fun. Nothing should bother you. At the same time, you should never feel ineffective or unproductive on any phone call.
Similar to how Google handles most things these days, Eccles seems to see conversational AI as the answer to this problem. “AI for multi-step, multi-role conversations can open a lot of interesting doors in terms of creating this protective and useful layer on top of every incoming call.”
Then the group’s product manager went on to hint that something might be coming later in the year.
We believe that AI is what takes you into the future. Stay tuned this year there are going to be some things that are coming up in the world of spam call resolution that I think are going to be really exciting.
While the Pixel’s call screen feature already uses AI, it looks like Google may be planning to enhance this feature further with more AI. And given that Eccles is teasing something for later this year, it looks like an upgrade to Call Screen might come around the time the Pixel 8 series is ready for launch.