Google noted that while India’s digital economy has benefited from increased access, affordable devices, and widespread adoption of digital services, the foundation of this growth—user trust—must be actively protected. With AI enabling both innovation and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, Google emphasized the importance of responsible technology stewardship.
“The digital sphere can be an engine of growth only as long as the citizenry that use it feel safe in doing so. As AI proliferates deeper into our digital lives, it’s crucial that we, as responsible stewards of India’s tech industry, ensure that the trust reposed by users in India’s digital ecosystem remains unchanged,” said a Google blog post authored by Heather Adkins, VP, Security Engineering, and Preeti Lobana, VP and Country Manager, India, Google.
Google said its safety charter is built on the framework of user safety, cybersecurity and responsible AI. “Under this charter, we shared how AI is eliminating vulnerabilities in enterprise software, how Google’s investment in its products and programs are keeping users safe, and the various ways in which AI is closing the gap between attackers and defenders. Think of it as our blueprint for tackling the online world’s new challenges, in collaboration with the wider ecosystem, under three key themes,” the blog post read.
A key focus of the Safety Charter is protecting end users from online fraud and scams, which have grown more complex through the use of AI-generated content, deepfakes, and voice cloning. Financial fraud, particularly related to UPI, cost Indians over Rs 1,087 crore in 2024, with industry estimates warning of potential losses of up to Rs 20,000 crore in 2025 if left unaddressed.
Scaling User Protection
Google’s response includes scaling its DigiKavach initiative, which combines in-product safeguards with user awareness campaigns, reaching over 177 million people. Building on the move further, Google said it has partnered with the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs to expand cybercrime awareness efforts across the country over the next couple of months in a phased approach.
The company also reported the removal of over 247 million ads and the suspension of 2.9 million accounts in 2024 for policy violations, including those linked to financial fraud. Enhancements in Google Search now enable the detection of 20 times more scam-related pages using AI, including LLMs, while globally, targeted protections have reduced impersonation attacks on customer service and government portals by 80 percent and 70 percent, respectively.
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On Android, Google said Google Messages blocks over 500 million suspicious messages monthly using AI-powered Scam Detection, and users receive more than 2.5 billion warnings against suspicious links from unknown senders. “This smart detection happens all on devices to keep conversations private.”
“Globally, Google Play Protect scans over 100 billion installed apps daily for malware across billions of devices,” the blog post said. Since the launch of the Play Protect pilot in India in late 2024, nearly 60 million attempts to install high-risk apps have been prevented, involving stopping more than 220,000 unique apps on over 13 million devices. On Google Pay, over 41 million scam-related transaction warnings were issued last year, safeguarding Indian users.
In strengthening cybersecurity for public and enterprise infrastructure, Google reiterated its secure-by-design and secure-by-default approach. The company’s Mandiant-led threat intelligence and Google Cloud’s M-Trends report continue to inform organizations about emerging threats, such as ransomware and cloud breaches. Additionally, a collaboration with DeepMind led to the first known case of an AI agent discovering a real-world memory-safety vulnerability in the SQLite database.
Through Google.org, the company said it has committed an additional USD 5 million to The Asia Foundation (in addition to an earlier funding of USD 15 million), expanding the APAC Cybersecurity Fund to support MSMEs and students across India, including new cybersecurity clinics in partnership with Indian universities. Google is also working with IIT Madras on Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) research.
Responsible and Inclusive AI Development
On responsible AI development, Google highlighted its values-driven approach, grounded in internal risk taxonomies and its AI Principles. The company says it employs rigorous testing, including AI-assisted red teaming, to identify and mitigate risks in its models.
“We are investing in tools to help identify AI-generated content. Our SynthID technology embeds an imperceptible, digital watermark directly into AI-generated content, with over 10 billion pieces of content already watermarked. We also require creators to disclose AI-generated content on YouTube and label synthetic images in Google Search,” the Google team said in a blog post on June 17, 2025.
In the Indian context, Google is refining AI models through initiatives like Gemini Language Testing and IndicGenBench to ensure accuracy and usability across 29 Indic languages.
The Safety Charter concludes with a call for collective action, urging cross-sector collaboration among government bodies, industry, and civil society. Google cited partnerships with entities such as the Department of Telecom, the Ministry of Home Affairs, SEBI, and global initiatives like the Global Signals Exchange and Partnering for Protection as vital to strengthening systemic resilience.
“Safety is a shared responsibility,” the company said, adding that Google’s Safety Charter for India’s AI-led transformation is its attempt to share how the company is leveraging AI’s potential to secure the foundation of India’s digital economy.
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India now a Powerhouse in Digital Economy
Swift expansion of India’s digital economy has cemented the country’s status as a “powerhouse”, Google India’s Country Manager and Vice President Preeti Lobana has said in an interview to PTI, adding that the US tech firm is “deeply committed to having a rich, thriving digital ecosystem when it comes to Android or Play Store.”
New technologies, like artificial intelligence, are unleashing creative potential, but at the same time, bringing to the fore challenges around deepfakes, she acknowledged.
“And therefore, our efforts to make sure that whatever content is created using our AI, there are watermarks on that, and then enabling or sharing tools through which a wider section of users can upload some of this content to be able to identify the ‘synthID’,” Lobana said, according to the report.
Google sees India as a critical market, Lobana was quoted as saying, adding that with the country on track to reach a USD 1-trillion digital economy in the near future, the tech giant hopes to leverage its expertise in advertising, cloud technology, and advanced AI to contribute to the nation’s economic growth.
“So, if you look at the digital landscape in India, (it is) so unique… think about the adoption. Who would have imagined a few years ago that UPI and therefore, consequently, you know, payment systems like Google Pay would be so widely adopted,” she reportedly said.
“As you know, we are looking at a 1 trillion digital economy in the next few years… so how do we bring the best of Google ads, our cloud and cutting-edge AI to power India’s economic momentum,” she said, outlining Google’s priorities for Indian market.
Blueprint for Digital Safety in the AI Era
As per Google, the charter is a blueprint for tackling the online world’s new challenges collaboratively with the wider ecosystem. According to the report, Lobana further noted that India was the launchpad for YouTube Shorts and GPay—showcasing the key role the market plays in Google’s global strategy.
“So if you think about the short form video ‘shorts’ came on YouTube first to India… Look at the scale of Google Pay in India. So that is where we launched the product, taking the learnings overseas. So India is a very critical market for us, and we have made investments in putting a lot of large teams here,” she reportedly said.
India has a unique lens on how technology is being used today, given the scale of the country, the speed at which people are coming online, and the vibrancy of the business community, said Heather Adkins, VP, Security Engineering, Google, according to an Economic Times report.
Initiatives under the Safety Charter will be executed through the Google Security Engineering Centre, being set up in a hub-and-spoke model across Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru, she reportedly said.
“What we might learn about a pattern in India will then be automatically translated to a user somewhere else in the world, which is very beneficial for us,” she reportedly said, “and because of India’s scale, you have so many people online, that gives us a lens that’s very unique in the world in terms of what we can see.”
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