Google Is Using AI to Help Stop Scams

Scammers are everywhere these days. They’re calling you, texting you, and hiding behind search results on the web. Unfortunately, you have to keep your guard up whenever engaging with technology.

Google, it seems, is doing something about it. The company released a blog post last week, highlighting four key ways they are using AI to help block scams across the web.

Blocking malicious notifications

One way bad actors trick you into thinking your device is hacked is through website notifications. Website notifications are supposed to be useful, or at least harmless, as sites can send you updates or alerts the same way an app would. The scam is to send you an influx of notifications that look alarming, as if your device has been compromised, but all the while these are simple, innocuous browser notifications.

Google is now rolling out warnings for Chrome on Android, powered, of course, by AI. When the AI model thinks a notification is spam, it’ll give you the option to unsubscribe or view the content it blocked. The decision of what to do next appears to be yours: You can go ahead and block the notifications for good, or, if you think the AI got it wrong, allow notifications from the site in question.

Google uses AI to stop scams in Search

Google says that it employs AI-powered defenses in Search to block “hundreds of millions” of scam-related results daily. The company claims it has caught “20 times the number of scammy pages,” which of course helps keep your data safe as you browse the web.

Google’s vast reach on the web reportedly enables it to study text across the internet to look out for new scams. The company uses airline customer scams as an example: Google says they identified an increase in the number of malicious users impersonating airline customer service providers, so they took steps to block these scams. The results, according to the company, were a reduction of these scams by over 80%.

Scam Detection

You likely get more scam calls and texts than you know what to do with. Google’s Scam Detection analyzes incoming calls and messages to determine whether it’s likely to be spam. If so, you’ll see an alert, with the option to end the call, or report and block the sender.

Gemini Nano

Gemini Nano is Google’s AI model designed for on-device processing, as it’s a lightweight model that requires fewer resources than the company’s other AI models. Google says Nano is able to “provide instant insight on risky websites,” including against brand-new scams.

The company claims Gemini Nano has been effectively used to protect against remote tech support scams, and that the hope is to eventually expand the protection to Android devices and more.