The launch of the call recording feature by Google was in news earlier and has been awaited. The call recording functionality has finally been enabled in beta builds of the Google phone app by the XDA Developers.
XDA Developers was able to show its working and posted its screenshots. Google has already launched its AI-powered voice recorder app at the company’s hardware event in October 2019 and it was one of the company’s impressive demonstrations. The app draws on advances in AI, speech synthesis, and speech recognition to automatically transcribe a few errors in voice recording as the person speaks in real-time. This app works on Google’s Pixel phones. But now, Google has planned to include these features in its Phone app and its working has already been shown.
Now Google would be able to record incoming and outgoing calls. There is a record button that can be seen while being on-call activity. When it is pressed, both the parties will get to know that call recording is initiated. It is due to legal reasons that the other party will be aware that their call is being recorded. Even when the call is stopped, both the parties will get notified that the call has ended. As the recording laws vary in different nations for privacy and security, Google took this step to protect itself and users from the liability. The recorded call will get stored in the call log and can be played directly from there. These recorded files can also be shared and exported as .wav file.
Google will also be introducing transcription functionalities in the Phone app. It displayed these first with the Pixel Recorder app and later using the Live Captions feature on Pixel 2. This feature will enable users to convert recorded calls to text files. Important recordings related to business, studies etc. can be recorded and viewed later. As Google has already done transcription via Recorder app, implementation in the Phone app will obviously not be difficult. It is, however, not specified how exactly it would function.
It is still not clear when the feature would be launched. But, it is expected to launch soon. Additionally, they may only come to Pixel devices in some regions, though Xiaomi has already said it will pre-install the Google Phone app. Google Phone app is the default calling app on most of the android phones and with the introduction of call recording and transcription feature, it would be easier to keep certain records.
