Scams are more prevalent and sophisticated than ever, posing a serious threat to even those who think they are cautious. Thankfully, your phone has developed some skills to keep you a little safer.

Google has begun rolling out Live Scam Detection to the Pixel Phone app, and an upgraded version of the Play Protect system helps detect and report fraudulent Google Play apps in real time. However, only the latter will be offered for non-Pixel Phone phones.

Live Scam Detection was announced at Google I/O in May and is powered by Google's Gemini AI. The idea is that Gemini listens for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams,” and when it detects them, it alerts you with audio and tactile warnings. Your phone will then display a “likely scam” warning, claiming that “suspicious activity has been detected on this phone.”

The screen then gives you the option to end the call or mark it as not a scam. But that should only be done if you are 100% sure that the call is legitimate. So you won't be doing that very often.

Google promises that Live Scam Detection will not record or transcribe conversations to your device or Google's servers and is off by default. It is also currently being rolled out as a beta to Pixels 6 through 9 in the US, and only for the English version of Google's phone app.

Google Play Protect's live threat detection is built to proactively seek out harmful apps on phones, analyzing suspicious behavior in real time. The goal of this feature is not to discover obviously malicious apps, but to flag them on the Play Store or upon download. The feature continually looks for signs of malicious intent or apps that are initially sleeping in an attempt to bypass existing security features.

All of this is done by Android's Private Compute Core, which keeps data secure and alerts the user if suspicious activity is detected. The feature is currently being rolled out to the Pixel 6 and later models, and has been confirmed to be available “in the coming months” for other Android phones, including Lenovo, OnePlus, Oppo, and Nothing.

Scams have recently spiked and will no doubt explode during Black Friday and the holiday season. Be sure to check out these tips for avoiding scams, especially if you are looking for large items like appliances. If you receive a call claiming to be from your bank, be sure to hang up and call your bank's official number back.