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Dangerous? Signal Blasts Google Effort to Use AI to Scan for Scam Phone Calls (uk.pcmag.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to c/privacyguides@lemmy.one
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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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[-] dukethorion@lemmy.world 51 points 2 weeks ago

"...locally on device without connecting to the internet"

How would it then report such behavior to Google, without internet?

If it notifies the end user, what good does that do? My phone is at my ear, I don't stop a conversation when another app sends a notification while I'm on a call.

This will 100% report things in the background to Google.

[-] TheHobbyist@lemmy.zip 22 points 2 weeks ago

You're putting a very large amount of trust on something which may simply require the flip of a switch to add the specified information to be sent back to Google along with all the regular heavy telemetry already feeding back...

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 weeks ago

Mega hot take on this site: I have no trust in Google

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this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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