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Dangerous? Signal Blasts Google Effort to Use AI to Scan for Scam Phone Calls (uk.pcmag.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.’”

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think you do need some central server, and then check if a lot of users report certain number blocks for spam in a short amount of time. No need for AI on this one. Isn't that how most phone spam blockers work?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I have that now, its OK. But spammers cycle through numbers so quick that good amount get through

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

That is how it already works. I don't think most people have as much of a problem with that as complete client side screening.