Google IO spawned a huge range of new ideas and features from Google, including some useful life hacks for lazy people, and AI was almost everywhere you looked. One of the more intriguing new features can detect scam calls as they happen, and warn you not to hand over your banking details – and it’s not as creepy as it might seem at first glance.
The feature works like this: If you get a call from a scammer pretending to be a representative of your bank, Google Gemini uses its AI smarts to figure out that the impersonator isn’t who he claims to be. The AI then immediately sends you an alert warning you not to give out any banking information or move any money, and suggests that you hang up.
Involving AI in the process raises some pertinent questions, such as whether your banking details are ever sent to Google’s servers for processing once detected. That’s something you never want to happen because you don’t know who has access to your banking information and what they can do with it.
Fortunately, Google has confirmed this (via MSPoweruser) that the entire process takes place on your device. This means that there is no way for Google (or anyone else) to retrieve your banking information from a server and use it for their own purposes. Instead, it remains safely secluded, away from prying eyes.
A data privacy minefield
Google’s approach goes to the heart of many concerns about the growing role AI plays in our lives. Since most AI services require huge banks of servers to process and understand all the data that comes their way, this means that you could end up sending a lot of sensitive data to an opaque destination without really knowing what happens to it.
This has had real-world consequences. In March 2024, AI service Cutout.Pro was hacked, causing the personal data of 20 million users to be lost, and this is far from the only example. Many companies worry that when using AI tools, employees may inadvertently upload company data, which is then fed into the AI as training data, potentially leaving it in the hands of users outside the company. That has actually already happened with Samsung and many other companies.
All of this shows how important it is to keep private data away from AI servers as much as possible – and given the potential for AI to become a data privacy minefield, Google’s decision to keep your banking details on the device is a good one decision.