One of the Gemini AI-powered features Google introduced at I/O this year was a solution for the never-ending scam calls. It has the ability to detect if a call is suspicious while it’s still ongoing and alert you so you can drop the call as soon as possible. This live scam detection feature for phone calls is now available for Pixel 6 and newer devices, provided you’re part of the Phone by Google public beta program in English.
“[S]cam calls are evolving, becoming increasingly more sophisticated, harmful, and harder to identify,” the company said in its announcement. Scam detection uses on-device AI to determine if a call is a potential scam in real time.
For example, if the caller tells you it’s your bank and asks you to transfer funds to another account because your account has allegedly been breached — a common scam tactic — you’ll get an audio and a haptic alert.
When you look at your phone, you’ll see a visual warning, as well as a button to easily end the call. If the AI makes a mistake, you can tap the “Not a scam” button instead.
Scam detection is off by default, and it’s up to you whether you want to activate it. Google says it doesn’t send your calls or their transcripts to a remote server, as the feature processes phone calls on the device.
On the Pixel 9 series, it’s powered by Gemini Nano, which Google describes as “the most efficient model for on-device tasks.” On Pixel devices older than the Pixel 9, it’s powered by the company’s other machine learning models.
Google didn’t say when live scam detection would come out of beta, but it promised it would be coming to more Android devices soon. In October, the company also introduced advanced scam detection for Messages, which also uses on-device machine learning models to identify scam texts.