Aisha Sharif, Product Manager, Pixel Phone on The Keyword

Scam Detection for phone calls, powered by Gemini Nano, protects you from fraud with on-device AI while keeping your conversations private to you. This Pixel-exclusive feature detects conversation patterns in calls commonly used by scammers in real time and will notify you if it senses anything suspicious.

And Scam Detection is now available in Google Messages, too. It uses on-device AI to flag conversational text patterns commonly associated with scams, so it can identify messages that seem harmless, but turn dangerous over time. You’ll receive a real-time warning so you can easily block and report the conversation.

My mom recently retired and if there’s one thing that raises her stress level it’s scammers. I bought her a Pixel 8a this last year, after having a Pixel 5 for some time, and she absolutely loves Call Screening and the Spam detection features in the phone app. Just the other day she sent me a screenshot of an E-ZPass texting scam that has been going around. She almost fell victim to it because E-ZPass is an actual highway toll system that is within her area. Thankfully, she didn’t respond to it or click the link, but now that Scam Detection is coming to Google Messages, my mom will now get a large badge alerting her that this message was a Scam.

More from the Google Online Security Blog:

Scam Detection in Google Messages uses powerful Google AI to proactively address conversational scams by providing real-time detection even after initial messages are received. When the on-device AI detects a suspicious pattern in SMS, MMS, and RCS messages, users will now get a message warning of a likely scam with an option to dismiss or report and block the sender.

As part of the Spam Protection setting, Scam Detection on Google Messages is on by default and only applies to conversations with non-contacts. Your privacy is protected with Scam Detection in Google Messages, with all message processing remaining on-device. Your conversations remain private to you; if you choose to report a conversation to help reduce widespread spam, only sender details and recent messages with that sender are shared with Google and carriers.

Scam Detection is only available in English in the U.S., U.K. and Canada and will expand to more countries soon.

Also, something I also found interesting is that a cybersecurity firm, conducted a funded evaluation of fraud protection features on a number of smartphones and found that Android smartphones, led by the Pixel 9 Pro, scored highest for built-in security features and anti-fraud efficacy. The full report is in a PDF.