Nowadays, scams are all over the place. Whether you’re answering a phone call, checking your email, or browsing the web, it’s more crucial than ever to remain alert. But you’re not solely to blame: As it turns out, Google may be utilizing artificial intelligence to help shield you from scams—at least when you’re using Chrome.
Google seems to be developing a new scam detection function in Chrome, as observed by researcher Leopeva64. Since it’s 2024, the feature obviously makes use of AI. You are not made aware of this by the feature’s name, “Client Side Detection Brand and Intent for Scam Detection,” but it is mentioned in the description: “Enables on devices LLM output on pages to inquire for brand and intent of the page.” The feature seems to use the large language model, or LLM for short, that powers many of the AI-generated apps and services you use to detect websites that seem suspicious.
Gemini dissected the feature’s explanation and condensed it into the following after Leopeva explained it to them in order to further elucidate its purpose: The function runs an LLM on your device based on the bot’s analysis to check for two things: suspicious intent, which looks for important indicators of frauds and phishing efforts, and misrepresentation of brands, such as when criminals impersonate legitimate businesses to fool you into visiting their websites.
The most recent version of Chrome Canary, which Google uses to test new flags (experimental features), has this option enabled. You can enable it, however it’s unclear if it functions yet. Open Chrome Canary first, then navigate to chrome://flags. Next, look for “client-side-detection-brand-and-page-intent” (obviously without the quotes), select “Enabled” from the “Default” drop-down option. After selecting “Relaunch,” you’re ready to go.
There are other browsers against AI scams besides Chrome. Leopeva64 discovered a comparable function in Microsoft Edge last week: a “scareware blocker.” This statement, in contrast to Google’s more ambiguous one, states quite plainly, “Allow Microsoft to use AI to detect potential tech scams.”
