Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google is working on new protections to help prevent Android users from falling victim to phone scams. During its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google announced that it’s testing a new call monitoring feature that will warn users if the person they’re talking to is likely attempting to scam them and encourage them to end such calls.
Google says the feature utilizes Gemini Nano — a reduced version of the company’s Gemini large language model for Android devices that can run locally and offline — to look for fraudulent language and other conversation patterns typically associated with scams. Users will then receive real-time alerts during calls where these red flags are present.
Some examples of what could trigger these alerts…
