“It’s probably not your mother.” Google has set out to end deepfakes in calls once and for all

Google has just given a twist to its system for detecting possible fraudulent calls, focusing on one of the most current problems related to them: identity theft using deepfakes. Through an update to the Phone app, all devices with Android 12 and above will be safer than ever starting this month.

The problem. Despite the efforts of both operators and the Government itself, in Spain More than 135 million calls were blocked and five million SMS with fraudulent intentions. Globally, about 30% of these calls have fraudulent intent They were deepfakes.

According to data from the March 2026 Global Financial Fraud Threat Assessment According to Interpol, the impersonation fraud led to more than 400 billion losses.

How they achieve it. The scammers, as Google explains on its blogare able to spoof the phone number by routing calls through software. In other words, it is relatively easy to impersonate another person’s phone number and, when they call us, it appears as a sender that we have saved.

If they manage to clone the voice using artificial intelligence, the result can be disastrous, since it is practically indistinguishable from reality.

The new. Starting this month, the Google Phone app will be updated with automatic spoofing detection. It is an addition to the detection of SPAM which we already had, capable of detecting deepfakes in an advanced way.

When a contact calls us and the Phone app is being used, the sending mobile phone sends a signal to our phone via RCS. So that? To verify that the call is coming from that contact’s legitimate device, and not from a scammer who has spoofed the phone number. That is to say: even if someone manages to copy a number and impersonate it, the additional authentication that Google requires when making the call cannot be replicated.

How will we know. The feature will arrive globally in the Google Phone app and, in the event that a fraudulent call is detected, we will see a “it may not be X person” notice. If we decide to take it, it will be our responsibility. The curious thing is that, on the call screen, the impersonated contact will continue to appear.

The main limitation of this function is that it depends on whether we use, yes or no, the Google Phone app. In other words, if they call us from iOS or using another application, this additional verification system is not required.

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