And? Google’s been listening to you for years and not only in english.
this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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Most people here: Yes, I bought an advertiser’s device, hooked up in a million ways to that advertiser’s services, who’s well known for monitoring every aspect of the life of every person they can, but how dare they monitor this part?
Dumb as I am, I have a Pixel... the good thing though? Graphene OS is an option.
Part of the reason I haven't yet moved away from Google services on my pixel is because of the call screening and anti-spam features. I screen unknown callers pretty much all the time so Google is listening if they call me anyway. I'm fine with that, knowing A. That the callers get a heads up that they're talking to an AI and being recorded and B. That the ones who are human and trying to scam me generally don't call back once they know the line is being actively recorded.
There's no feature parity for this on any of the roms I would move to. Taking it a step further is unnecessary for me, and I'll probably opt out. But I can fully understand why someone might want it (for their elderly family members for instance).
So far as I know, if your device uses their Gemini Nano LLM, it doesn't reach back to their servers at all unless you OPT IN to the 'Help service inprove'.
This feature though and a few other calling features has made me switch from iPhone single handedly, I was receiving 6-10 spam calls a day, now I see none because they're screened in the background. It's fantastic. I'm hooked on these Pixel features and only hope more move to becoming on device features with the ability to opt in to sending certain things off device.
So, I have several legacy Google Assistant compatible devices that do not work with Google's new AI. As a result I haven't switched over to Gemini for pretty much anything and I probably won't. I'm currently building a Home Assistant system to take the place of Google Assistant when it finally sunsets but the going is slow (I have limited time to dedicate to that specifically at the moment). But for phone specific use, I'm taking the wait and see approach.
Home Assistant is such an awesome tool. I use it every day and shamefully have it linked to my Google Home so Gemini can turn on and off devices when prompted. Aside from that, I could just go the route of setting up a local LLM on my server and having Home Assistant be my new assistant on device so it doesn't use Google at all.
I definitely recommend Home Assistant though, between the iPhone users and now myself on Android in our home, it makes everything appear native to the end user. Now I just use Zigbee and Zwave devices for everything since they're more reliable and much cheaper.
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is this really official? seems like a fake site
Great, more AI bloat from Google that is now listeningin on my calls? How do I disable?
Try removing via ADB, maybe?
Disable? No. But call everyone and everything cunts to poison the AI? Works for me.
No, no, Fuck You, no!!
I will have no phone that employs "Counterfeit Conciousness" to listen to every fucking word of every fucking conversation leading to (among others):
- Further training
- Data retention of complete call content somewhere (waiting to be hacked)
- Possible reports to LEO (or worse)
- ...whatever else I can't think of just now...
Fuck right off with this.
This solidifies for me I will never own a Pixel phone.
And, if this becomes ubiquitous in Android, I'll have to rethink that, too.
Doesn't mean I'll necessarily go to iOS; more likely completely rethink having a phone at all.
Fuck Google entirely. Don't be Evil my ass.
🙄 🤡 🖕 🖕
Pixel is the only device that is supported by GrapheneOS (sadly), so you can own Pixel just for installing grapheneOS on it.
This solidifies for me I will never own a Pixel phone.
Sounds like a pixel phone is exactly what u want just u want GrapheneOS on it.
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Additionally, just fucking stop scammers from using fucking gift cards.
Surely it's not that hard to detect that a gift card sold in Australia is being activated in Russia.
The gift card people have absolutely no motivation to fix this problem. They are making bank.
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Jokes on them. I don't have phone conversations
More AI testing...
Nice, wholesale illegal wire tapping. It's OK, it's legal because it's AI and Google is totally not storing any recordings. They say this is all on-device, but that's an "oops" or equivalent from them hoovering up recordings of every phone call you use one of their ~~surveillance endpoints~~ phones on.
heavy /s
What do you mean, "illegal?" If the phone user consents to turning it on, that makes it legal.
I hate to defend Google, but I will absolutely defend single-party consent for recording. Don't like it? Don't fucking call me in the first place. It absolutely grinds my gears when shitty software (including from Google) plays an obnoxious warning message when I want to record a call, even though I have the right to do so without warning.
In many places call recording (or indeed processing of personal information which is highly likely to be present in phone calls) requires consent to be legal. I highly doubt this kind of processing is legal in the EU without both parties consenting.
As is stated, the call is processed locally in the user's device. If that holds true, there is no recording and no third party processing going on. Your point does not make sense.
The person owning the phone where the processing takes place, is the processor of the data in this case. That still requires consent from the data subject per gdpr.
No, that's ridiculous.
This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: [...] (c) by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity;
Fair, I was not aware of that exception. It does seem to cover this case, assuming Google is actually not sending any data outside of the phone, use it for further training etc.
I highly doubt this kind of processing is legal in the EU without both parties consenting.
In Finland recording calls and meetings you participate in is legal, without need to give notice or ask for consent. And necessary, because spoken contracts are as valid as written ones, and you need to be able to prove the existence of such contract.
I haven't heard of any EU countries where call recording would not be legal. Would be interesting to hear from people who live in EU.
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on device
scam detection
I know I'll be downvoted into oblivion as I can hardly believe I've formed this opinion myself, but tbh this is a good application for some of this AI tech.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine grew up well-off; from an immigrant family but their parents were educated and in a lucrative profession so he always went to private schools etc. Fast forward to about 10 years after all the kids moved out; the parents had divorced amicably and his mom had a sizeable retirement along with the payout she had from the divorce. In the 7 figures - she never had to worry about money.
Anywho, mom ran into some medical issues so the kids had to get involved with her finances again, as she couldn't do it herself. Turns out that over the course of months or years, mom had been getting scammed to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars at a time, to the point where she had actually taken out a mortgage on the home she previously owned outright. They're still sorting things out but the number he has tossed out in the past is ~$1.4M that got wired overseas and is just... gone now.
So yes, I probably won't turn this feature on myself, but for the tens of millions of uneducated and inept people out there, this could genuinely make a difference in avoiding some catastrophic outcomes. It certainly isn't a perfect solution, but I suspect my friend would rate it as much better than nothing, and I would argue that this falls short of being "strictly evil".
Yeah Google claims it's not recording, storing or being sent the conversations or sharing them with anyone, and that this is all done 'on-device'.
The thing is, I don't trust them. At all.
Maybe the terms and conditions will silently change. Maybe their definitions of "recording" and "save" will change. Maybe they're blatantly lying and are willing to pay a fine if they get caught.
Google's whole business model is harvesting and selling people's data, so I have to assume the worst intentions.
They could also spy on you without providing this feature at all. I get not trusting Google, and you shouldn't be using a Google Pixel in that case. But in the event that you are using a Google Pixel, this optional feature is only a positive. If Pixels spy on you, then they are doing it with this or without it.
This AI tech, smat-home, cloud compute etc would all be amazing if we could trust that it wasn't built to harvest us.
We, the people, have become the Commons.
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Kinda cool, on device and hopefully doesn't call back to Google then I'm fine with it
I'm so tired of this. It feels like an onslaught.
Back in 2008 or whatever I let Google handle my voicemails, and I enjoyed the convenience of the machine-transcriptions.
Now I wonder if my voicemails are being studied and trained on or whatever.
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Yup... Time to go back to graphene OS. Just been lazy about putting it on this phone.
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It's pretty easy to imagine all the ways this technology can because a nightmare. Maybe Russia puts AI spies on your phone that listen to see if you say anything bad about Putin to the person you are talking to and then pings their police and tells them what you said. Fuck you google for creating this technology.
Oh, and if you are part of the vast majority of people who aren't going to fall for a random 'gift-card' scam, this AI will always be running constantly draining your battery anyway.
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