Google Working on 'AI Replies' for Call Screen Feature on Pixel Phones: Report

Google Pixel phones include a Call Screen feature that could soon be upgraded with new artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, according to a report. The Mountain View-based tech giant is reportedly working on an 'AI Replies' feature which will generate smart replies based on what the caller has said, instead of the standard replies seen in the current version of Call Screen. The feature is currently under development, so it will not be visible in the latest version of the Phone app on Pixel devices, and could be rolled out to the company's devices in the future.

Google Pixel to Reportedly Get AI Replies in Call Screen

The Call Screen feature in the Phone app on Pixel smartphones allows users to set the Google Assistant to receive incoming calls and ask why the call was placed. It is available in select regions (not in India) and works on all Pixel smartphones.

Last year, Google added the contextual replies feature to Call Screen, which allowed users to respond to the caller if they did not wish to answer a call. For example, if the Call Screen feature told the user that they were getting an incoming call about booking an appointment to the doctor's office, users could choose between confirming and declining the appointment and the on-device assistant could let the caller know the same.

While useful in certain scenarios, the feature is quite limited in the range of responses a user could send, and it does not work if the caller's response is too complex. Now, an Android Authority APK teardown reveals that the company is working on making contextual replies better with "AI Replies".

AI Replies in Google Pixel's Call Screen feature
Photo Credit: Android Authority/AssembleDebug

The publication says that the company might use AI to process the caller's response and show the user more relevant replies. Based on the image, AI Replies is described as “Call Assist suggests new AI-powered smart replies based on the caller's Call Screen responses”.

9to5Google also dug into a Pixel smartphone's Phone app to find more evidence of the feature. The publication found code strings suggesting that the AI-generated replies were internally being called “dobby” Another string of code reportedly revealed that the feature will be powered by “dobby LLM”.

It is believed that this is a codename for Gemini Nano which already powers some of the AI features in the Google Pixel 9 series. However, the company might also use a separate large language model to power the feature. Currently, Google has not shared any information on when AI Replies in Call Screen might be released.