To prevent accidental triggers, digital assistants like Google Assistant have a trigger phrase. This is to let the assistant know that they are being called. While this is a good implementation, it can be troublesome and annoying to keep saying “OK Google” all the time whenever you need to do something.
This is why Google introduced Quick Phrases, where for certain activities, users can just say what they want without “OK Google”, and according to an APK teardown by 9to5Google, it looks like that feature will be extended to incoming calls.
What this means is that in the future, whenever Pixel owners receive a call on their phone, they will be able to silence it using a single keyword instead of a phrase. At the moment, Google Assistant’s Quick Phrases are available for both the alarm and incoming calls, where users can say “stop” or “snooze” for alarms, and “answer” or “decline” incoming calls.
This upcoming change means that users will also be able to silence incoming calls, so if you’d rather not make it obvious that you’ve declined that call but don’t want your phone to keep vibrating or ringing, silencing it is a good alternative. There is no mention of when this change will be implemented, but it is speculated that maybe it could debut alongside the Pixel 7 smartphones in the coming months.
Source: 9to5Google