Norton has revealed that it is working on an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot whose sole purpose is to help users become better at detecting fraud attempts online.
The premise of Norton Genie is simple: if you receive an email, a text message, or access a website that you think is suspicious but not sure if it’s a scam or not, just ask Genie. Copy and paste the content of the message, or take a screenshot of the website, bring up Genie and ask whether the content is legitimate or not.
“We want to give people digital freedom – the freedom that can only be achieved when you are safe and empowered online,” said Ondrej Vlcek, president of Gen, Norton’s parent company. “Genie is an always-available, easy-to-use, trusted advisor that helps you stay ahead of highly persuasive scams. By bringing together Norton’s best scam intelligence with cutting-edge AI, we can empower people to do their full business safely, privately, and with confidence. take advantage of the digital world.”
Norton Ghost
Genie comes in the form of a mobile app and a website. The tool is currently in early access and is available to users in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Users in these countries can find Genie for free on Norton.com or the Apple App Store. The tool is compatible with iOS 14.0 or later, Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox.
Norton expects the tool to be generally available later this year and to expand to Android, but there are no concrete details yet.
Another important feature of Genie is that users can ask follow-up questions. If the tool considers a particular email to be fraudulent, users can ask how it came to that conclusion and what the best next steps are.
Genie learns along the way, so the more people use the tool, the smarter it gets. That, in theory, should make it the perfect deterrent in a few months.