Google Cloud showed off a version of its Gemini AI that can place phone calls, negotiate prices and close sales on a business owner's behalf, moving voice assistants from answering questions to actually doing the work.
Naren Kachroo, Google Cloud's Head of AI Go-to-Market, demonstrated the capability at TechSparks 2026, walking through two scenarios: a restaurant booking and a sales negotiation for a small business selling safety helmets.
In the sales demo, a fictional business owner named Rajesh had 500 helmets to clear out and asked an AI voice agent to find a buyer and get at least Rs 400 per helmet. The agent scanned the company's leads, picked out a construction firm that needed exactly that many helmets, and placed a call in Hindi. When the buyer pushed back on price, the agent held the line on Rajesh's instructions instead of caving, according to the demonstration Kachroo played.
A second demo showed an assistant booking a table for eight at a restaurant. It fielded a question about bringing in a birthday cake, identified a dish from a photo, talked through vegetarian options, and switched between English and Spanish mid-conversation.
Kachroo framed both as proof that Google wants voice AI to move past being, in his words, "an experience to talk to AI," and into agentic territory, where a task actually gets finished rather than just discussed. Alongside the demos, he introduced Gemini Live voice capabilities, plus separate models for text-to-speech, speech-to-text and translation, and a feature called Live Avatar that pairs the voice agent with a visual AI presence on screen.
The pitch leans heavily on India. Kachroo said he sees the Indian consumer "continuing to go as voice first," pointing to the country's language diversity and the number of people more comfortable speaking than typing into an app. Google has also been building out support for Indian languages, accents and regional phrasing, and Kachroo pointed to Equal AI, an Indian company making voice assistants that can take calls for users, as an example of the work already happening in this space.
Nothing shown at TechSparks came with a release date, a price or a list of supported languages for the sales and booking features specifically. What Google is selling is a direction: voice AI that keeps context across a conversation, handles interruptions, and follows an owner's pricing instructions without being walked through every step.
Whether that holds up outside a stage demo is the open question. The next thing to watch is whether Equal AI or other partners ship a product built on these tools that small businesses can actually put to work rather than just watch on a projector screen.
ADFiled by The AI Desk
Models, assistants and the companies and chips behind them, reported from what was released and what was claimed, with the difference kept clear.
More from this desk →
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.