"It's not about the phone...” Google Trust and Safety head on protecting budget smartphone users from AI-powered scams

Google

As artificial intelligence becomes a bigger part of online scams, Google says it is ensuring that its AI-based security tools are designed to work not just on high-end devices but also on the low-cost smartphones that most Indians use.

At the Safer with Google roundtable held in Delhi on Tuesday, Ram Papatala, Managing Director, Trust and Safety at Google, spoke to Moneycontrol about whether Google’s protections are effective on smartphones with limited processing power — which are common across India.

Papatala made it clear that Google's approach to online safety is not limited by device type. “It’s not necessarily about the phone—it’s about the surfaces the user is interacting with,” he said. By "surfaces," he referred to apps and websites that people use, regardless of what phone they’re using.

Papatala explained that many of Google’s core security tools—such as scam detection in Google Messages, screen hiding during sensitive banking sessions, and warnings for suspicious links, are designed to work across a wide range of devices, including budget smartphones. “We try to go as broad as we can,” he added.

He acknowledged that newer, high-end phones do have some advantages, especially when it comes to running on-device AI models like Gemini. These models allow certain security features to run locally on the phone, making them faster and more flexible. But even without these advanced models, most of Google's protections still function well on lower-end devices.

“There might be some cases where processing power limits how a feature works,” Papatala noted, “but from a feature perspective, we aim to make them native—built in—to ensure broad coverage.”

India remains one of Google’s largest and most diverse user bases, with millions accessing the internet primarily through affordable Android devices. As scams increasingly rely on AI tools to trick users, Google is under pressure to ensure protections are not only advanced but also accessible to everyone.

Papatala’s comments reaffirm Google’s intent to make its AI-powered safety tools inclusive and widely available, regardless of hardware limitations. The message was clear, the online safety shouldn’t depend on how expensive your phone is.