More than half of Americans reported receiving at least one scam call per day in 2024. To combat the rise of sophisticated conversational scams that deceive victims over the course of a phone call, we introduced Scam Detection late last year to U.S.-based English-speaking Phone by Google public beta users on Pixel phones.
We use AI models processed on-device to analyze conversations in real-time and warn users of potential scams. If a caller, for example, tries to get you to provide payment via gift cards to complete a delivery, Scam Detection will alert you through audio and haptic notifications and display a warning on your phone that the call may be a scam.
Part of the reason I haven’t yet moved away from Google services on my pixel is because of the call screening and anti-spam features. I screen unknown callers pretty much all the time so Google is listening if they call me anyway. I’m fine with that, knowing A. That the callers get a heads up that they’re talking to an AI and being recorded and B. That the ones who are human and trying to scam me generally don’t call back once they know the line is being actively recorded.
There’s no feature parity for this on any of the roms I would move to. Taking it a step further is unnecessary for me, and I’ll probably opt out. But I can fully understand why someone might want it (for their elderly family members for instance).
So far as I know, if your device uses their Gemini Nano LLM, it doesn’t reach back to their servers at all unless you OPT IN to the ‘Help service inprove’.
This feature though and a few other calling features has made me switch from iPhone single handedly, I was receiving 6-10 spam calls a day, now I see none because they’re screened in the background. It’s fantastic. I’m hooked on these Pixel features and only hope more move to becoming on device features with the ability to opt in to sending certain things off device.
So, I have several legacy Google Assistant compatible devices that do not work with Google’s new AI. As a result I haven’t switched over to Gemini for pretty much anything and I probably won’t. I’m currently building a Home Assistant system to take the place of Google Assistant when it finally sunsets but the going is slow (I have limited time to dedicate to that specifically at the moment). But for phone specific use, I’m taking the wait and see approach.
Home Assistant is such an awesome tool. I use it every day and shamefully have it linked to my Google Home so Gemini can turn on and off devices when prompted. Aside from that, I could just go the route of setting up a local LLM on my server and having Home Assistant be my new assistant on device so it doesn’t use Google at all.
I definitely recommend Home Assistant though, between the iPhone users and now myself on Android in our home, it makes everything appear native to the end user. Now I just use Zigbee and Zwave devices for everything since they’re more reliable and much cheaper.
My biggest issue right now is trying to figure out what I need/want to work vs things I don’t need. This list is one I’ve been keeping of things that I want it to do/be compatible with:
Weather Calendar News/RSS Feed Light Panel Media Panel Search Query Panel Use of Voice controls Singular touchscreen hub and android phone Works with Google home max speakers and Google nest mini speakers Chromecast equivalent functionality
It’s based on the things I use Google Assistant for daily or at the very least weekly. Most all of it can be done with an android tablet and my raspberry pi. But implementing it to be the way I want isn’t as simple (hasn’t been as simple for me) and I think that’s down to following guides for a lot of things that weren’t necessarily intended to work together cohesively.
You can get most of these features with a Google voice number and use it on any forwarded number
I have a Google voice number. You actually can’t. You can get spam filtering which works sort of but definitely not in the same way. I have never had a Voice call use Google’s call screening on graphene os for instance because it doesn’t work. I have graphene os running on a pixel 8 pro for the purposes of seeing what works and doesn’t work to see if I can ever daily drive it. I like graphene os a lot but rely too much on certain Google specific android features and that’s what my first comment was generally talking about.
More AI testing…
Great, more AI bloat from Google that is now listeningin on my calls? How do I disable?
Disable? No. But call everyone and everything cunts to poison the AI? Works for me.
Kinda cool, on device and hopefully doesn’t call back to Google then I’m fine with it
I have graphing OS. I still get a ton of spam phone calls a day.
I’m apparently not enough of a software developer to figure out how to use SpamBlocker app. Anybody have any suggestions?
Jokes on them. I don’t have phone conversations
and when i do, they’re not in English
Or at least not in conversational English. Me “The cheese is old and moldy.” Wife “Roses eggs” Me “Bach unaccounted.”
No wheezing the juice!
Buddddiey
so basically you communicate through a string of auto-generated usernames. clever. do you have a rotating cipher? that’s the way to do it if you want to stay ahead of the Nazis
haha very cryptic, i love that ^^
In plain English this means
Me “Have you checked for eggs recently? I just saw a bunch in the nesting boxes. Too many for one day.” Wife “Yeah, it’s been a while. Even Rose [the duck], who hasn’t laid an egg in five years, probably laid one.” Me “I haven’t seen our special needs cat, the one we trapped as part of a TNR run on our own property, in the last 12 hours. Have you seen that blessed dumb beast who walks like he is drunk? If you see him now could you bring him inside?”
Any sufficiently developed culture has its own language. In this house we go out of our way to make obtuse inside joke references to keep each other on our toes.
amazing compression factor, say a novel-worth of information in a couple of words
One day you come home, you see all your stuff is in boxes. Then you see a note on the fridge, it says: “Womp womp” You fall to your knees and break down in tears. Through your tears you see another note underneath the fridge. You reach for the note. The note reads: “Womp, womp?” You began to laugh maniacally. You hear footsteps, you stop laughing. Your wife stands behind you. She says: “Kept you on your toes didn’t I?”
Always read the fine print.
Nice, wholesale illegal wire tapping. It’s OK, it’s legal because it’s AI and Google is totally not storing any recordings. They say this is all on-device, but that’s an “oops” or equivalent from them hoovering up recordings of every phone call you use one of their
surveillance endpointsphones on.heavy /s
What do you mean, “illegal?” If the phone user consents to turning it on, that makes it legal.
I hate to defend Google, but I will absolutely defend single-party consent for recording. Don’t like it? Don’t fucking call me in the first place. It absolutely grinds my gears when shitty software (including from Google) plays an obnoxious warning message when I want to record a call, even though I have the right to do so without warning.
In many places call recording (or indeed processing of personal information which is highly likely to be present in phone calls) requires consent to be legal. I highly doubt this kind of processing is legal in the EU without both parties consenting.
I highly doubt this kind of processing is legal in the EU without both parties consenting.
In Finland recording calls and meetings you participate in is legal, without need to give notice or ask for consent. And necessary, because spoken contracts are as valid as written ones, and you need to be able to prove the existence of such contract.
I haven’t heard of any EU countries where call recording would not be legal. Would be interesting to hear from people who live in EU.
As is stated, the call is processed locally in the user’s device. If that holds true, there is no recording and no third party processing going on. Your point does not make sense.
The person owning the phone where the processing takes place, is the processor of the data in this case. That still requires consent from the data subject per gdpr.
No, that’s ridiculous.
This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: […] © by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity;
Fair, I was not aware of that exception. It does seem to cover this case, assuming Google is actually not sending any data outside of the phone, use it for further training etc.
I read that it’s “opt out” not “opt in”.
You need to opt in to the public beta. Once it’s out of beta… Who knows!
No, no, Fuck You, no!!
I will have no phone that employs “Counterfeit Conciousness” to listen to every fucking word of every fucking conversation leading to (among others):
- Further training
- Data retention of complete call content somewhere (waiting to be hacked)
- Possible reports to LEO (or worse)
- …whatever else I can’t think of just now…
Fuck right off with this.
This solidifies for me I will never own a Pixel phone.
And, if this becomes ubiquitous in Android, I’ll have to rethink that, too.
Doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily go to iOS; more likely completely rethink having a phone at all.
Fuck Google entirely. Don’t be Evil my ass.
🙄 🤡 🖕 🖕
Pixel is the only device that is supported by GrapheneOS (sadly), so you can own Pixel just for installing grapheneOS on it.
So, it’s on device, which negates many of the above worries. Does that change things? I’m all good with private AI, personally. Slippery slope and all, though…
This solidifies for me I will never own a Pixel phone.
Sounds like a pixel phone is exactly what u want just u want GrapheneOS on it.
Never recc that again, Linux phone or nothing
Linux phones don’t really exist as a practical thing you can replace android with.
Bro what’s wrong with GrapheneOS?
We got baited by piece of shit journos
It’s a local model. It doesn’t send data over.
If they want call data they can buy it straight from service providers anyway
We got baited by piece of shit journos
It’s an official announcement written by Google.
Additionally, just fucking stop scammers from using fucking gift cards.
Surely it’s not that hard to detect that a gift card sold in Australia is being activated in Russia.
The gift card people have absolutely no motivation to fix this problem. They are making bank.
They need to be given motivation, through legal obligation.
Obviously.
Doesn’t mean I’ll necessarily go to iOS; more likely completely rethink having a phone at all.
Man cuts off nose to spite face; news at 11
Fuck Android. Run Calyx or Graphene. it’s not difficult for any PC enthusiast.
unfortunately both of those have a very small list of supported devices.
This ☝️, which nobody tells you, and then about 20 other things nobody tells you except that one Indian vlogger who installs everything on everything.
TL;DW - if you have a relatively recent Pixel, you’re probably good. Everything else, get out the forum posts, an old POS windows box you don’t mind trashing and start finding out what doesn’t work. You might get some Samsung to mostly work ok.
Which include pixels
yeah, it’s all about individual priorities
Can’t back up everything on my phone without root and cant root without wiping the phone so…
How have you managed to save things on your phone you cannot back up without root?
You’re just straight fucked if this is true. Don’t save permanent things to your phone. Your phone is transient. Phones are not permanent.
edit: so the “phone shit is permanent” crew came out early on this one? Bruh, your phone can be taken from you in an instant. It’s transient.
Still based on garbage android. Android is just shit pilled on shit.
Linux can’t manage the cellphone blobs yet. I’ll be using linux on a phone when it works well.
Counterfeit consciousness
I like that
I mean, I would own a pixel phone… with linux on it…
Since it’s processed on device they don’t (necessarily) need to transmit and store your conversations in some central location. I guess theoretically this could be done in a secure way.
on device
scam detection
I know I’ll be downvoted into oblivion as I can hardly believe I’ve formed this opinion myself, but tbh this is a good application for some of this AI tech.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine grew up well-off; from an immigrant family but their parents were educated and in a lucrative profession so he always went to private schools etc. Fast forward to about 10 years after all the kids moved out; the parents had divorced amicably and his mom had a sizeable retirement along with the payout she had from the divorce. In the 7 figures - she never had to worry about money.
Anywho, mom ran into some medical issues so the kids had to get involved with her finances again, as she couldn’t do it herself. Turns out that over the course of months or years, mom had been getting scammed to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars at a time, to the point where she had actually taken out a mortgage on the home she previously owned outright. They’re still sorting things out but the number he has tossed out in the past is ~$1.4M that got wired overseas and is just… gone now.
So yes, I probably won’t turn this feature on myself, but for the tens of millions of uneducated and inept people out there, this could genuinely make a difference in avoiding some catastrophic outcomes. It certainly isn’t a perfect solution, but I suspect my friend would rate it as much better than nothing, and I would argue that this falls short of being “strictly evil”.
This AI tech, smat-home, cloud compute etc would all be amazing if we could trust that it wasn’t built to harvest us.
We, the people, have become the Commons.
Yeah Google claims it’s not recording, storing or being sent the conversations or sharing them with anyone, and that this is all done ‘on-device’.
The thing is, I don’t trust them. At all.
Maybe the terms and conditions will silently change. Maybe their definitions of “recording” and “save” will change. Maybe they’re blatantly lying and are willing to pay a fine if they get caught.
Google’s whole business model is harvesting and selling people’s data, so I have to assume the worst intentions.
They could also spy on you without providing this feature at all. I get not trusting Google, and you shouldn’t be using a Google Pixel in that case. But in the event that you are using a Google Pixel, this optional feature is only a positive. If Pixels spy on you, then they are doing it with this or without it.
I agree this feature enabled by default so people tech literate enough can just turn it off would be great for several people I know, just not from Google.
I took my dad for cancer radiation treatment. While in the waiting room, this little old lady came in. I saw her struggling to remove a necklace and offered to help. She had really tangled herself in it trying to get it on (definitely in a “chemo brain” mind fog).
She answered her phone, and I heard a very obvious scam on the other line. I tried telling her, and at first she tried to explain to me that I was wrong, it was some kind helpful people. I took the phone from her and confirmed it was a scam. I told the staff at the clinic but that was about all I figured I could do.
This Ai maybe could have helped. Maybe.
Chemo and alzheimer patients and their families are targets for that reason. Privacy was already a joke before DOGE copied it all off for Elmos Next Reich
My usernote for you contains the phrase “privacy-illiterate”, but this is a good take, assuming data isnt sent back. You’ve been upgraded, lol
I’m so tired of this. It feels like an onslaught.
Back in 2008 or whatever I let Google handle my voicemails, and I enjoyed the convenience of the machine-transcriptions.
Now I wonder if my voicemails are being studied and trained on or whatever.
Yeah I just about had a meltdown trying to disable all the AI collection that Samsung phones come with nowadays. Phones are more like data harvesting engines than devices of utility. It’s gotten so much worse over the past 5 years. I mean it was never good but it’s making the internet nearly unusable if you want any kind of privacy.
Completely agree about watching the privacy destruction ramp up significantly in recent years. The one silver lining is that deciding how much and what to allow for myself and my children is just a lot easier, and even in less abusive scenarios, less smartphone use is good for basically all of us.
Yup… Time to go back to graphene OS. Just been lazy about putting it on this phone.
You should absolutely use GrapheneOS, but why would this optional offline feature sway you to it?
Reading this from GOS. Tapping freedom. Installation doesn’t take more than 10 mins!
Ugh I know I have it on my old phone. ADHD just being a cunt lately. Makes it hard to life lol
Same
So, wait, Google can record calls, but we can’t?
They calls are not recorded, are they? They are transcribed live.
It’s effectively the same thing.
Whether or not the recording is kept or not, it’s using the same function.
Member when they sucked up everyone’s wifi passwords and the world was like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
WiFi passwords? I think you mean SSIDs (wifi name).
No they slurped up the pw’s too back in the day. Before WEP2? I forget.
Hm. The intertubes tells me it was unencrypted data. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-wifi-street-cars-spy-lawsuit-settlement,39998.html
Oh. Right. It collected unencrypted (i.e. email) passwords. Allll niiiice and legal, probably. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/google-says-collecting-data-unencrypted-wifi-networks-isnt-illegal
If people need to be warned that they might be scammed by someone with an Indian voice asking them for gift cards, I think that they should be reclassified as AI mounts instead of people at that point.
People do become more senile as they get older, but they need to recognize it as well as prepare ahead of it in time. Who knows, maybe being an AI pet mount then wouldn’t be so bad, as long as it was with an offline localized LLM-like AI vetted openly and widely, not the transparent excuse for abuse this is.
It’s pretty easy to imagine all the ways this technology can because a nightmare. Maybe Russia puts AI spies on your phone that listen to see if you say anything bad about Putin to the person you are talking to and then pings their police and tells them what you said. Fuck you google for creating this technology.
Oh, and if you are part of the vast majority of people who aren’t going to fall for a random ‘gift-card’ scam, this AI will always be running constantly draining your battery anyway.
this AI will always be running constantly draining your battery anyway
It’s part of the phone app and only engages when you get a call, my god the lack of understanding on a feature that’s been out for years now in this thread is actually crazy
It’s not been out for years.
New AI-Powered Scam Detection Features to Help Protect You on Android
March 4, 2025
AI call screening has been on Pixels since 2017/2018, this appears to be a mild update to how that process works while rolling it out to all of android rather than just the pixel line
This tech isn’t new at all
Ah, but what if I use a British accent? Got em
