The millennial aversion to phone calls is well known, and Google has been making that avoidance even easier recently with additions to the Pixel’s call assist functions.

Fresh off the addition of an auto-delete feature for Call Notes, it now looks as if the next call assist feature will be “Call Message”. Functioning similarly to Apple’s Live Voicemail feature, Call Message will essentially act as your personal secretary.

Call Message is an improved voicemail

It’s never been so easy to ignore phone calls

Voicemail has been due a big update, and Google’s Call Message is certainly that. It’s functionally quite similar to Live Voicemail, which has been a part of iOS since iOS 17. It’s a simple idea: When you miss or decline a call, Call Message takes over, picking up the call and asking the caller to leave a message. The message will then be transcribed in real time, and you’ll be able to see that script as the message unfolds. If it turns out it’s a friend calling on a new number then you can interrupt the message and pick up the phone to chat. The aim is to help filter out nuisance callers, while still allowing you to pick up the call if it turns out to be important.

If you don’t pick it up, or you’re not looking at your phone, then you can find the transcript of the message in your Phone app.

It’s not a complete replacement for a voicemail service. If your phone is off, or if you’re outside of network coverage then the feature won’t trigger, and your regular voicemail will be used instead. However, it does use all on-device processing to work, so it doesn’t need an internet connection to function, which is always a nice addition. Since it uses AICore, the add-on included with Android since Android 14, it’s hoped this feature will make its way to a number of older devices, though we don’t expect it to venture outside of Google’s Pixel phones for the moment.

As a final amusing note, the feature is codenamed “Beesly”, presumably a reference to Pam Beesly, the receptionist from The Office.