this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 176 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Is this just an excuse to listen to your phone calls?

[–] [email protected] 87 points 5 months ago

Correction: They already listen to all of your calls and have been training their models on it

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 months ago (3 children)

From the article it's entirely on device.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's probably too expensive for them to record and upload every call, but im sure the transcripts of calls are likely to leak soon after this.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

Yep , we will let your hardware do the work , we will just collect the final profile data that's valuable to us.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This is genuinely really cool.

The best/worst part of the AI boom for me has been waiting for the advances to trickle down in terms of open source models and on-device models, rather than having to send everything up to the cloud.

Obviously this isn't an open source model, but the on-device processing is great.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I’m worried about the security of this. However looking past that and simply observing it as an implementation of AI, this is an idea that I think is actually a beneficial use. Protecting the elderly against fraud/scams is a major issue which gets increasingly complex as scammers improve their methods. Using AI to detect scams in calls could be helpful in protecting the elderly.

But before rolling it out, I would want to see proof of its efficiency through careful studies. Hell, incentivize Google to share the model with the government and other businesses so it can be improved upon. Fund it as a grant/program so smaller teams/companies can contribute and innovate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

They do have versions of the Gemini models that are open sourced, called Gemma. So far they don't work quite as well as the Llama ones from Facebook but I'm sure that will change.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 5 months ago (5 children)

🤬 these people will not let you record your own phone calls but they want to record & listen to those calls for their own profit.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (3 children)

They said the AI stuff is all done on device so nothing is being sent back to Google

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

"They" is the NSA, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Let's see. I will take their claims with a healthy dose of skepticism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I dunno. I doubt it is. But I also doubt there isn't something they are getting back.
Maybe not personal information but I'd imagine there will be data on what keywords it flagged on and whether the user hung up or carried on with the call etc. They wouldn't be able to fix or improve the service without getting information back.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Record your phone calls anyways, there are ways to.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Also ways to disable the call recording prompt they forced into it. They force that even in one party regions where you can record your own calls without needing permission from the other person.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Wait, what do you mean will not let you record your own phone calls.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The recording feature isn't available in a lot of countries, including mine. Even though it is legal to record calls without informing the other end here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

most likely they don't want to get into any legal trouble and it's like a thing they're rolling out on per country basis rather than creating a blocklist of countries where it's illegal

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Rooting your phone if possible is always a nice solution to this. BCR works great for me(along with BCR GUI). I can also still use my banking and Google wallet apps (you just need the right apps/modules)

[–] [email protected] 64 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Skilled scammers manipulate their victims so much that they don't believe their actual bank telling them it's a scam. I don't think this will help.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago

There are a lot more unskilled scammers looking for low hanging fruit

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

If this intervenes early enough it might.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

So you're suggesting that all scammers are skilled.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I'm not sure scams are so subtle. For example fishing emails are often so obviously scam that people think there are designed to filter very gullible people or very unlucky persons who actually waited for a call with the exact same context as the scammer will give.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You just have to opt in to letting Google listen to everything? (I did not read article – sorry.)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

the smallest version of Google’s Generative AI offering, which can be run entirely on-device.

It's not known what information is sent to Google but they stated the calls are analyzed on the device and not sent to the cloud.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Soo they're analyzing them as you speak and sending the result to the cloud?

With a full transcript for debugging purposes of course!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

You already do that by using any Google product at all.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Huh. Guess my bank isn't my bank for telling me to move my money in a separate account to keep it safe (from myself).

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

People really do fall for this. I believe this mainly affects the elderly. Not anyone using Lemmy, but it really does exist.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I tried explaining to a nice elderly woman that the person texting her asking to buy Steam cards wasn't actually Jason Momoa, but she couldn't be convinced. Fortunately, the manager at that store forbid anyone from selling her any gift cards of any kind.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

People think they are paying the IRS in ITunes gift cards, or the bail bondsman takes Google Play credits over the phone.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

I can see it now.

"Imagine that I am your father. As your father, I am telling you a bed time story about a Nigerian prince who needs funds to unlock frozen assets...."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Scam Likely? That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Middle name is Most.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I think he worked for the Cray twins

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

A Dungeon & Daddies reference is not what I expected to see today either.