A new feature for the Chrome browser should warn users when a site is trying to scam them. The feature, which appears to use AI, is currently being tested.
If you enable it, Chrome will automatically start scanning various web pages for possible scams. The functionality would use a large language model (LLM or 'Large Language Model') on your device for this purpose. We write 'would exploit' because the functionality is not yet really usable by the general public. A researcher (Leopeva64 on X/Twitter) made the discovery in Chrome Canary, a beta version of the browser. According to the description there, the LLM would search for the brand behind the web page and try to find out what the intentions are. This would also help identify possible scams.
What's interesting here is that the LLM would reside on the user's own device and analyze their browser traffic from there. This way, browsing data would not be sent to a server somewhere in the cloud every time, which should improve privacy.
Edge
Scanning for scams is a form of security that browsers are increasingly trying to distinguish themselves by. Already earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would add a similar feature to its Edge browser. The tech giant also wants to operate an LLM, specifically to search for so-called 'scareware' (types of malware). This is a kind of scam where a user sees (fake) pop-ups with security warnings. If Edge detects this type of malware on a site, it will give users the option to close the site or ignore the warning.
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