The Google Play Protect service, which protects Android smartphones from potentially dangerous applications, has received a new Live Threat Discovery feature, which allows you to identify such applications in real time using AI, immediately warning of a threat. The new feature is already available on Pixel 6 and newer series smartphones, and will soon appear on Android devices from other vendors.
Image source: 9to5google.com
Live Threat Discovery, announced at Google I/O in May of this year, can detect even hard-to-detect malicious applications. Google said the feature can identify malicious apps that “go out of their way to hide their behavior or lie dormant for a period of time before engaging in suspicious activity.” Instead of scanning for malicious code upon download, Play Protect will monitor for signs of suspicious app behavior using AI even after the app has been installed on the phone.
Live Threat Detection is initially focused on apps that collect personal data without user consent, but Google is considering detecting other types of malicious apps in the future.
Google also said that the new feature will not collect user data as the on-device AI models used analyze the app’s privacy-preserving behavior using Private Compute Core.