Google is bringing AI protection to Pixel users in fight against $1 trillion of fraud
Scammers, fraudsters, hackers, cyber criminals or threat actors—whatever you call them they are costly. According to the Global Anti-Scam Alliance they cost victims upwards of $1 trillion every year. Google has been at the forefront of defending its users against the scamming hordes. Be that by way of Gmail defenses that stop, according to Google, 99.9% of all spam, or Google Messages’ advanced security wrapping a layer of protection around 2 billion suspicious messages every month. Now Google has announced it is introducing new real-time and AI-powered protections for Pixel users initially with more Android devices getting coverage soon.
Google Introduces Scam Detection And Google Play Protect Live Threat Detection With Real-Time Alerts
In a Nov. 13 announcement, Lyubov Farafonova and Steve Kafka, product manager and group product manager for Android, respectively, confirmed that Pixel users will be the first to access new AI-powered, intelligent, real-time protections on Android.
The first of these, Scam Detection, is in response to the $1 trillion dollars a year fraud threat to users, in the face of scam calls evolving to become harder to spot. You only have to read the alarming tale of how one cybersecurity professional almost fell victim to the most sophisticated of AI-driven fraud attempts against his Gmail account to understand the nature of the threat smartphone users are up against. “That’s why we’re using the best of Google AI to identify and stop scams before they can do harm with Scam Detection,” Farafonova and Kafka said.
Scam Detection uses-device AI to notify users of potential scam calls, in real-time as they happen. It does this by detecting conversation patterns associated with fraudulent calls be they supposedly from your bank or Google support itself. However, Google is quick to point out that Scam Detection has been designed with user privacy in mind, meaning the user is always in control of their data. “Scam Detection is off by default, and you can decide whether you want to activate it for future calls,” Google said, “the AI detection model and processing are fully on-device, which means that no conversation audio or transcription is stored on the device, sent to Google servers or anywhere else, or retrievable after the call.”
Scam Detection is available to English-speaking Phone by Google public beta users in the U.S. with a Pixel 6 or newer device.
When it comes to Google Play Protect, this also works in real-time to protect users from malicious or unsafe apps by analyzing behavioral signals related to the use of sensitive permissions and interactions with other apps and services. “With live threat detection,” Google said, “if a harmful app is found, you’ll now receive a real-time alert, allowing you to take immediate action to protect your device.” The AI analysis of activity patterns by apps can now track down malicious apps that “try extra hard to hide their behavior or lie dormant for a time before engaging in suspicious activity,” Google said.
Again, this protection happens on your device in a privacy-preserving way through Private Compute Core, which allows Google to protect users without collecting data.