How we’re using AI to combat the latest scams
For more than a decade Google has used advancements in AI to protect you from online scams where malicious actors deceive users to gain access to money, personal information, or both. Today, we're releasing a new report on how we fight scams in Search, and sharing the new ways we're using AI to keep you safe across Search, Chrome and Android.
Stopping scams in Search with AI-powered defenses
In Search, AI helps us detect and block hundreds of millions of scammy results every day. Our Fighting Scams in Search report showcases how the investments we’ve made in our AI-powered scam detection systems — along with improvements to our classifiers — have enabled us to catch 20-times the number of scammy pages. These improvements help ensure the results you get are legitimate, and protect you from harmful sites trying to steal your sensitive data.
Advancements in AI have bolstered our scam-fighting technologies — enabling us to analyze vast quantities of text on the web, identify coordinated scam campaigns and detect emerging threats — staying one step ahead to keep you safe on Search. For example, we’ve observed a significant increase in bad actors on the web impersonating airline customer service providers and scamming people in need of help. We’ve already reduced these scams by more than 80% in Search, greatly reducing the risk that you call a scammy phone number.
Supercharging Safe Browsing in Chrome with Gemini Nano
The Enhanced Protection mode of Safe Browsing on Chrome is our browser’s highest level of protection, and keeps users twice as safe from phishing and other scams versus our Standard Protection mode.
We’re now using Gemini Nano, our on-device large language model (LLM) on desktop, to provide Enhanced Protection users with an additional layer of defense against online scams. The on-device approach provides instant insight on risky websites and allows us to offer protection, even against scams that haven't been seen before. Gemini Nano's LLM is perfect for this use because of its ability to distill the varied, complex nature of websites, helping us adapt to new scam tactics more quickly.
We're already using this new AI-powered approach to protect users from remote tech support scams, one of the biggest online threats facing users today. Our goal is to expand this protection to Android devices and even more types of scams in the future.
Fighting scams, spam and unwanted notifications
Sometimes the risk from scammy sites can extend beyond the site itself. If you've enabled notifications from websites, malicious sites can try to scam you through a barrage of notifications. To help you stay ahead of malicious, spammy or misleading notifications, we're launching new AI-powered warnings for Chrome on Android.
When Chrome’s on-device machine learning model flags a notification, you’ll receive a warning with the option to either unsubscribe or view the content that was blocked. And if you decide the warning was shown incorrectly, you can choose to allow future notifications from that website.
Safeguarding you from sophisticated call and messaging scams
Scams are commonly being initiated through phone calls and text messages that appear harmless at first, but then evolve into dangerous situations. We recently launched on-device AI-powered Scam Detection in Google Messages and Phone by Google to protect Android users from these types of sophisticated scams.
No one likes being tricked, but history has shown us that scammers are constantly evolving their tactics and unlikely to give up anytime soon. That’s why we’re committed to making their job as hard as possible through using Google’s latest AI advancements to raise the bar for safety across all of our products.
