Your AI can phone the plumber? What Grok Bot's calling feature could mean for UK sole traders

Elon Musk says Grok Bot can now pick up the phone on your behalf.

“Grok @Bot can now call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation!” he wrote on X on Sunday 25 October, at 14:35 UK time.

For sole traders who spend part of the working day chasing suppliers, checking delivery slots or asking for quotes, that is an eye-catching promise. But a lot about the feature is not yet confirmed.

What we know

Mr Musk’s post describes the whole loop: the Bot places the call, makes the request, takes notes and sends a summary afterwards.

According to TeslaNorth, Mr Musk did not say which subscription plans include calling, which countries it works in, or what number appears on the other person’s phone. TeslaNorth also reported that it was unclear whether the feature had reached every user, and that the official @bot account had not posted rollout details as of Sunday morning.

When RealTeaNews checked the official Grok Bot changelog on 27 October, the latest entry was version 0.75.8, dated 24 October. It does not list outbound phone calls. Its earlier entries cover voice conversations with the Bot itself, which is a different feature from the Bot calling other people.

The official @bot account did announce a related change on 22 October: “Grok Bot can now use Calendar, Reminders, Contacts, and more apps on your phone. Rolling out now on iOS and Android.” Access to contacts and a calendar is the kind of groundwork a calling assistant would draw on, though Musk has not explained how the two features work together.

UK availability has not been confirmed. For the other Grok Bot features that shipped last week, see our related story, “Musk backs Grok Bot’s new tricks: Pages, a password Vault, 1Password sign-ins and phone controls”.

Where it could help

If and when it reaches UK users, the tasks Mr Musk describes map onto familiar admin for a one-person business:

• ringing a merchant to check whether an order is ready for collection;
• asking a supplier for a price or a lead time;
• booking or moving an appointment, such as a van service;
• getting a written summary of the call to refer back to.

The benefit is time: handing off a call rather than waiting on hold yourself. RealTeaNews has not tested the feature, and there is no published evidence yet on how reliably it handles real calls. Anyone using it would be wise to check the summary against what was actually agreed before acting on it.

The UK rules question

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance on telephone marketing, which says it is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act, sets out separate rules for different kinds of call.

Automated marketing calls, which the guidance describes as calls made by an automated dialling system that plays a recorded message, need specific consent in advance. Live marketing calls must not be made to numbers registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or Corporate TPS without consent. The caller must say who is calling and display a number.

Routine admin calls, such as asking a supplier for a quote, are not marketing. But the ICO has not said whether calls made by an AI agent count as “automated” calls under these rules, and RealTeaNews has found no ICO guidance that addresses it. Sole traders thinking of using an AI caller for sales or promotional calls should treat this as an open question. This article is not legal advice.

RealTeaNews has not sought comment from xAI or the @bot account. We will update the piece when they publish rollout details.

Disclosure: RealTeaNews uses Grok Bot to help research its articles. This article was reviewed by our editor.