Chrome Gets Gemini Nano on Desktop to Fight Scams, Warnings for Notifications on Android

I’m not sure I will ever be convinced that AI is a tool I should use when planning a vacation or when in need of recommendations for an outing. I’m certainly not about to use AI to create a fake world or experience through a picture I’ve taken. I am an AI skeptic, because the promises of it bring back memories of the ridiculous 5G promises that were made and never kept, only in a more sinister way. That said, AI will probably be the most useful when it’s out of the way, doing work behind the scenes to make our lives more efficient and safer.

Today, Google shared a couple of ideas it is rolling out that use AI to make Chrome experiences safer from spam or scams.

GEMINI NANO ON CHROME DESKTOP: The first to be aware of is the addition of Gemini Nano to Chrome on desktop to try and fight against online scams. Google says that an “on-device approach provides instant insight on risky websites and allows us to offer protection, even against scams that haven’t been seen before.” While they didn’t expand on that, I’d imagine that will include big warnings to the user if a scam is detected through Gemini Nano. Google is apparently already using this to detect remote tech support scams.

The goal is to expand this protection to Android devices in the future.

AI PROTECTION FROM NOTIFICATIONS ON ANDROID: The other new idea is Android-related and it includes protection from notifications you’ve subscribed to on Chrome on Android. Google will use on-device machine learning to flag notifications that it believes are possible spam. We’re talking about the pop-ups where a website asks if you want to subscribe to notifications from them (you shouldn’t) and they then send those to you with new articles, sales promos, etc. Google believes it can identify if they are malicious, spammy, or misleading.

The warning that pops up will block and then call out the “Possible spam” before giving you two options. You can then unsubscribe instantly or still show the notification if you believe Google has labeled it spam in error.

See, AI can be useful, just not often in the ways that everyone keeps suggesting.

// Google

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