On Tuesday Alphabet’s Google announced that Brazil will be the very first country to test an anti-theft feature for Android phones that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to find out when a phone has been stolen and lock the device’s screen.
In the initial test phase, three types of lock will be available. In one of them, Google will use AI that it made to help detect signals of common movement associated with theft and block the screen.
The second feature allows a user to lock the device’s screen remotely by feeding the phone number and completing a security challenge from another device.
The last mode includes automatically locking the screen if the device is left without internet access for long periods.
According to the company, the features will be available to Brazilian users of Android phones version 10 or higher starting in July.
Google said, ‘They will be released to users from other countries gradually this year’. Phone theft is a growing problem in Brazil. The number of stolen cellphones in Latin America’s largest economy increased 16.6% in 2022 from the previous year to nearly 1 million, according to data from the 2023 Brazilian Public Security Yearbook.
The Brazilian government launched an application in December named Celular Seguro, which allows users to report a stolen phone and block access to it using another device belonging a trusted person.
Around 2 million people were registered with the application across the country in May 2024, while 50,000 phones had been blocked, according to the Justice Ministry.
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