We can’t think of much worse than receiving unsolicited images from someone named Richard with the exposure turned all the way up, other than, perhaps, receiving those same images on Google Messages. If you fall into the billion or so users who supposedly use Google Messages regularly, the company is making good on its promise to automatically detect any unsavoury Rich-pics headed your way, and blur them.
not hotdog?
Hey, maybe that’s your thing. But for the rest, anything that’ll help avoid the horrors an unknown number presents is welcome. The Sensitive Content Warnings feature, rolling out to beta users, is automatically disabled on adult smartphones, meaning you’ll need to enable it in the Messages settings.
It’s a different story on a teenager’s phone, where the setting is automatically enabled, although it can be disabled at the click of a button by visiting the Protection and Safety tab in the app’s settings. As for a child’s smartphone currently under supervision, the setting is enabled, and cannot be turned off without the Family Link administrator performing the task on their device. We’re unsure why you’d want to do that, but it’s there.
Read More: Google rolls out extra security for your Android smartphone
Sensitive Content Warnings aren’t reliant on some guy up in the cloud to quickly scan a batch of incoming messages. Like everything in the tech industry, an AI is employed to do the dirty work through the “SafetyCore” app that you might have noticed in your app drawer recently. Should SafetyCore’s basic classifier detect anything untoward, it’ll blur the image and present the opportunity to see the image, or even block the sender.
The feature’s rollout is currently limited to those participating in the Google Message beta, though it won’t be very long before it reaches all Android 9+ devices running Google apps. System requirements are entirely trivial, requiring no less than 2GB of RAM to function – something that’ll knock very few devices out of the running.
