After shirking tradition and devoting its entire Google I/O keynote to showcase how it's stuffing AI into everything imaginable, the company has reserved day two to catch up on the one-time star of the show, Android. Alongside the arrival of the second Android 15 beta on Wednesday, Google is unveiling previously unannounced security features in its 2024 mobile software, including AI-powered theft detection, Google Play fraud protection and more. Theft Detection Lock is a new Android 15 feature that will use AI (there it is again) to predict phone thefts and lock things up accordingly. Google says its algorithms can detect motions associated with theft, like those associated with grabbing the phone and bolting, biking or driving away. If an Android 15 handset pinpoints one of these situations, the phone's screen will quickly lock, making it much harder for the phone snatcher to access your data.

Billions of Android phones are getting new tools to stop phone thieves from accessing your information and to slow down their criminal behavior, Google announced today at its I/O developer conference. Android phones will soon use artificial intelligence to automatically detect when they have been snatched from your hand and lock themselves, as part of the new changes that include adding extra protections to secure your phone if it has been stolen. The upgrades--some of which will come with the Android 15 operating system, while others will be compatible with older phones--come as phone companies are increasingly building extra measures into their software to thwart rampant levels of phone thefts and further protect people's data. As well as the stolen phone tools, Google is introducing new changes to Android 15 that will scan how apps are using "sensitive permissions" in real time to detect potentially suspicious app activities. Around the world, phone thefts are a huge problem--in London, for example, a phone is stolen every six minutes. Thieves riding electric bikes or scooters can snatch phones out of people's hands, pickpockets can easily nab devices from bags, and others are known to peer over shoulders to learn a phone's PIN before they steal the device.