Google’s AI model will potentially listen in on all your phone calls — or at least ones it suspects are coming from a fraudster.

To protect the user’s privacy, the company says Gemini Nano operates locally, without connecting to the internet. “This protection all happens on-device, so your conversation stays private to you. We’ll share more about this opt-in feature later this year,” the company says.

“This is incredibly dangerous,” says Meredith Whittaker, the president of a foundation for the end-to-end encrypted messaging app Signal.

Whittaker —a former Google employee— argues that the entire premise of the anti-scam call feature poses a potential threat. That’s because Google could potentially program the same technology to scan for other keywords, like asking for access to abortion services.

“It lays the path for centralized, device-level client-side scanning,” she said in a post on Twitter/X. “From detecting ‘scams’ it’s a short step to ‘detecting patterns commonly associated w/ seeking reproductive care’ or ‘commonly associated w/ providing LGBTQ resources’ or ‘commonly associated with tech worker whistleblowing.’”

  • @[email protected]
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    11 month ago

    Can’t really get behind her on this one. Assuming it works the way Google says it does, it couldn’t be used for any of those things she’s concerned about.

    If it doesn’t work that way, well then your entire device is compromised to begin with, because Google controls the entire operating system.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      Assuming it works the way Google says it does,

      There was a time when I trusted Google to be open and honest.

      But that time is long in the past.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        If it doesn’t work that way, well then your entire device is compromised to begin with, because Google controls the entire operating system.