Its kind of funny to think we've already had many of these services that were apparently really ahead of their time.
I remember being an outside sales rep for a local mom and pop wireless company in the late 90's, early aughts. We sold an automated "assistant" called Wildfire that would screen calls and stood as an intermediary between you can callers. She would answer, you would record your name and then it would call you on any number of devices you had entered. At one point, I had it calling three of my numbers (office and two mobile numbers) and at any time, you could just send people to voicemail. It was very similar to how many of the AI assistants work today. If I remember it was like $30/month, but as reps we got to use it for free which was really fun tinkering with it.
AT&T also had something like this where you could have a program they offered which would screen your calls and either connect you or you could send people directly to voicemail. It didn't have nearly the features that Wildfire had, but it was effective.
Obviously in the late 90's and early aughts, something like this wasn't really needed and after a few quarters, AT&T quietly stopped offering their service. Wildfire lived on until the mid aughts after being bought and then killed due to lack of adoption and use.
Kind of crazy these kinds of programs were pretty common before the AI assistant craze now.
I seem to vaguely recall this Wildfire brand name....Because when i first got google voice, it was really half of an acquired company...which if remember correctly was a competitor to wildfire, no? Like grandcentral or something? Anyway, yeah, when i first got google voicemail, this feature was really impressive! But, of course eventually learned that this tyoe of thing already existed in some corners :-)
I remember being an outside sales rep for a local mom and pop wireless company in the late 90's, early aughts. We sold an automated "assistant" called Wildfire that would screen calls and stood as an intermediary between you can callers. She would answer, you would record your name and then it would call you on any number of devices you had entered. At one point, I had it calling three of my numbers (office and two mobile numbers) and at any time, you could just send people to voicemail. It was very similar to how many of the AI assistants work today. If I remember it was like $30/month, but as reps we got to use it for free which was really fun tinkering with it.
AT&T also had something like this where you could have a program they offered which would screen your calls and either connect you or you could send people directly to voicemail. It didn't have nearly the features that Wildfire had, but it was effective.
Obviously in the late 90's and early aughts, something like this wasn't really needed and after a few quarters, AT&T quietly stopped offering their service. Wildfire lived on until the mid aughts after being bought and then killed due to lack of adoption and use.
Kind of crazy these kinds of programs were pretty common before the AI assistant craze now.
Details about Wildfire here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildfire_Communications