Several months after releasing AI-based scam protection for a limited amount of Pixel smartphone owners, Google is expanding the feature and officially releasing scam detection for calls.
Last October, the company introduced Spam protection tools on Google Messages that alert users about suspicious links, as well as job and delivery scams.
With its latest update, Google is expanding the feature with abilities to detect a “wider range” of unspecidied fraudulent activities.
If a user receives a suspicious SMS, MMS, or RCS message, a message warning of a likely scam will be sent with an option to dismiss or report and block the sender.
According to the company, scam protection will be on by default and apply only to conversations with no contacts, while all of the processing will happen on the user’s device.
Scam Detection in Google Messages is launching in English first in the US, UK, and Canada and will expand to more countries soon.
In addition to spam detection on messages, Google is officially launching the same tool for calls, which was previously available for a limited number of Pixel owners.
However, the feature is still currently limited to owners of Pixel 9 smartphones, the company said in a blog post.
If enabled, Scam Detection will beep at the start and during the call to notify participants that the feature is on. According to Google, all calls will be processed on the device and powered by the company’s Gemini Nano model.
The Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates that international scammers stole over $1 trillion last year, prompting companies to implement protective measures.
Recently, a company called Hiya released a scam detection feature available via its app. The app’s AI assistant answers all unknown calls on users' behalf, asks callers to state their name and purpose, and evaluates whether to connect them.
Last year, O2, a UK telecoms operator, created a human-like AI person who answers fraudsters' calls in real-time, aiming to waste as much of their time as possible with human-like chat.
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