Google unveils Safety Charter for India to tackle online frauds and promote responsible AI use

New Delhi: Google on Tuesday introduced its Safety Charter for India, outlining a comprehensive approach to combat online fraud, counter synthetic and misleading content, and promote cybersecurity and responsible development of artificial intelligence.

According to Google, the charter is designed as a blueprint for addressing emerging online threats in collaboration with the wider ecosystem. It focuses on three key pillars, protecting users from online fraud and scams, strengthening cybersecurity for government and enterprise infrastructure, and building AI in a responsible manner.

The announcement comes amid growing concerns about cyber fraud, with scammers increasingly leveraging technologies such as AI-generated content, deepfake videos, and voice cloning to design convincing fraudulent schemes.

Citing recent data, Google noted that Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-related frauds alone cost Indians over Rs 1,087 crore in 2024. Projections estimate cybercrime-related losses could reach Rs 20,000 crore in 2025 if appropriate measures are not taken, according to a Google blogpost.

“It is about building digital safety. As we accelerate India's economic growth, there is one essential connective tissue, and that is trust. While the digital landscape brings many possibilities, we are all aware of the many unique challenges it presents as well,” said Preeti Lobana, Vice President and Country Manager, Google India, at the 'Safer with Google India Summit'.

Lobana highlighted that while the internet serves as a powerful tool for positive transformation, elements like safety, security, and trust cannot be an "afterthought". She added that as AI increasingly becomes part of people’s digital lives, ensuring a secure and safe online environment is critical.

“Trust is the bedrock of our digital aspirations and the reason that India's digital economy has become a force multiplier and a growth engine,” she said.

Under its 'Digikavach' programme, Google said it has reached more than 177 million Indians through AI-powered protection systems and awareness initiatives focused on financial fraud prevention.

The company added that AI integration across its platforms is significantly improving threat detection capabilities.

“Search now identifies 20 times more scam-related pages; impersonation attacks on customer service and government sites have dropped by over 80 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively. Google Messages blocks over 500 million scam texts monthly and has issued more than 2.5 billion suspicious link warnings via on-device AI,” it said in a release.

Since the pilot launch of Google Play Protect in India in October 2024, the system has blocked nearly 6 crore high-risk app installation attempts across 13 million devices, the company added.

Google further said that its multi-pronged approach combining AI-driven threat detection, cross-sector intelligence sharing, and policy collaboration has yielded tangible results. The company noted that Google Pay alone helped prevent financial fraud totalling Rs 13,000 crore during 2024.

To enhance cybersecurity, Google said it is following an “AI-first, secure-by-design approach” that emphasises early threat detection and intelligence exchange.

As part of its research initiatives, Google announced a partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) to advance work in Post-Quantum Cryptography. This includes developing next-generation anonymous tokens for secure and privacy-first digital interactions.

To ensure transparency in AI-generated content, the company said its ‘SynthID’ initiative has applied invisible digital watermarks to over 10 billion AI-generated assets. In India, Google continues to localise its AI efforts through initiatives like Gemini Language Testing and IndicGenBench, aimed at optimising performance across 29 Indic languages to improve cultural relevance and accessibility.