With the cybercrime landscape continuing to be shaped by advances in artificial intelligence, Google has confirmed that it will start rolling out what it says is “an industry-first protection” to alert Android users when a caller is using AI voice-cloning tools as part of a scam attack. The fake call detection feature, which will be enabled by default, can detect such calls as long as both the user and the impersonated contact are using Phone by Google.
Google Pixel Users First To Get Android Fake Call Detection
It has been quite the few days for Google security updates, starting with 151 Chrome browser vulnerabilities fixed, followed by the June Android security bulletin dropping a patch for an actively exploited zero-day. One of the most impactful security updates, however, has yet to hit Android devices. The global rollout of the fake call detection feature starts this month, with users of Android 12 on Pixel devices being first in line.
A June 2 Google confirmation has revealed that the new feature will be able to help protect users against such common AI voice scams as a family member supposedly calling for help. The caller ID might say “mom” and the caller might sound exactly like her, right down to intonation, but “it’s a scammer using AI tools to impersonate her and demand money from you for a fake emergency,” Google said. Having already launched something similar by way of verified financial calls to warn when a scammer is impersonating your bank, Google has now turned its attention to personal AI scam callers with fake call detection.
It is actually pretty clever stuff, and I’m not easily impressed by claims of scam protection as a rule. Essentially, fake call detection acts as a digital handshake between your device and that of the caller, as long as you are both using Phone by Google, that is. When one of your contacts calls, their phone will send a real-time end-to-end encrypted Rich Communication Services “silent confirmation” to verify the legitimacy of the communication. This is how it confirms the call is actually coming from the caller’s device rather than someone spoofing the caller ID and using AI technology to deepfake the voice on the line. If the call is missing this confirmation signal, your phone will “instantly notice this and ping your contact’s actual device to double-check,” Google explained. If they are not calling you, you will see an on-screen warning advising you to hang up immediately. It’s good to see Google continue to take the dangers of Android scams seriously and evolve alongside the threat itself, adding fake call detection to existing measures such as AI-powered scam protection.
