Google has announced a flurry of initiatives aimed at strengthening digital safety in India as the country rapidly embraces AI. In a blog authored by Evan Kotsovinos, Vice-President of Privacy, Safety & Security, the company notes that “safety is the infrastructure for transformational AI”, rather than simply an add-on.
With more Indians coming online every month, Google emphasises the urgency of trusted and secure digital adoption in a landscape where scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
The update lays out how Google intends to embed protections into everyday products, advance privacy and cyber resilience and partner with local communities. By doing so, Kotsovinos underlines India’s potential not just as a market, but as a proving ground for globally scalable safety frameworks in the blog.
On Product Protection In India
The company is rolling out a new set of safety tools in India as scams grow more sophisticated and digital payments become routine. Speaking at ‘A Dialogue on Safe and Trusted AI’ held by Google yesterday in Delhi, Anirban Nandi, Director for Android Partnerships at Google India, said the company wants to shift India “towards a future where we can predict and prevent a potential scam”, rather than respond after losses occur. Additionally, he warned that 80% of Indian adults have encountered online scams and that half never recover their money.
At the heart of these changes are protections built directly into Android devices. Google already blocks 2 billion scam messages and calls in India each month. Furthermore, Nandi pointed out that Google Play Protect has stopped 115 million attempts to install sideloaded apps that misuse sensitive permissions commonly exploited in financial fraud. Google Pay also now surfaces over 1 million warnings every week for high-risk transactions.
However, the newest tools introduced for India take a more proactive approach, focusing on the moments when users are most vulnerable:
- Protection for financial apps: Google is piloting a system with Google Pay, Navi and PayTM that warns users if they open one of these apps while screen-sharing on a call with an unknown number. This is a common setup in coercive fraud calls. The alert appears prominently and offers a one-tap option to end the call, helping users exit before they are pressured into a transfer.
- Enhanced Phone Number Verification (ePNV): ePNV replaces the familiar SMS one-time passwords with a secure, SIM-based verification. Instead of waiting for a code that scammers can intercept or trick users into revealing, the phone quietly checks in the background whether the number truly belongs to the device.
Labelling Content and SynthID
Alongside device-level protections, Google is working to help Indians navigate an online world where AI-generated images and videos are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish. Google is widening access to SynthID, its AI-watermarking…
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