this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 175 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] empireOfLove2 88 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (3 children)

From the article it's entirely on device.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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] 71 points 1 year 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] 14 points 1 year 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 1 year ago

"They" is the NSA, right?

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

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

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

Record your phone calls anyways, there are ways to.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year 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 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Ghoelian 6 points 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

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

If this intervenes early enough it might.

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

So you're suggesting that all scammers are skilled.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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!

[–] empireOfLove2 8 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year 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 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year 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 1 year 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] 15 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Middle name is Most.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think he worked for the Cray twins