Norton has revealed it is working on an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot whose sole purpose is to help its users get better at spotting fraud attempts online.
The premise of Norton Genie is simple - if you receive an email, a text message, or open a website you think is suspicious, but can’t be sure if it’s a scam or not, just ask Genie. Copy and paste the contents of the message, or grab a screenshot of the website, bring up Genie and ask if the content is legitimate or not.
"We want to give people Digital Freedom – the freedom that can only be achieved when you’re safe and empowered online,” said Ondrej Vlcek, President at Gen, Norton's parent company. “Genie is an always on, easy-to-use, trusted advisor that helps you stay ahead of highly convincing scams. By bringing together best-in-class scam intel from Norton with advanced AI, we can empower people to take full advantage of the digital world safely, privately and confidently.”
Norton Genie
Genie comes in the form of a mobile app and a website. The tool is currently in early access phase, available to users in the UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Users in these countries can find Genie for free, either at Norton.com, or in the Apple App Store. The tool is compatible with iOS 14.0 or greater, Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Firefox.
Norton expects the tool to become generally available, and expand to Android, later this year, but there are no concrete details as yet.
Another major feature of Genie is allowing users to ask follow-up questions. If the tool deems a certain email message as fraudulent, users can then ask it how it came to that conclusion, and what would the best next steps be.
Genie learns as it goes along, so the more people use the tool, the smarter it gets. That, in theory, should make it the perfect fraud deterrent in a few months’ time.
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