Google graduates LLM-powered privacy ‘Checks’ for Android, iOS apps from Area 120

Abner Li | May 3 2023 - 10:44 am PT

Last year, Area 120 announced “Checks” to help Android and iOS app developers with privacy compliance. Following the incubator’s demise, Checks is “now a fully integrated Google product” that leverages AI and large language models (LLMs).

Google describes Checks as an “AI-powered platform that helps companies with Google Play and iOS mobile apps quickly discover, communicate and fix privacy compliance issues.” There are three main features:

“Compliance Monitoring helps companies identify potential regulatory and mobile app store compliance issues by using automated tests to scan an app and its privacy disclosures, and provides actionable recommendations to help address any identified issues.”
“Data Monitoring provides end-to-end visibility of an app’s data collection and sharing behaviors, enabling teams to more efficiently manage their data governance practices.”
“Store Disclosure Support helps companies ensure that their Google Play Data safety section is accurate and up-to-date.”

Checks can analyze both public and in-development versions of mobile apps. It leverages “app understanding technologies” and Google’s (unspecified) latest Large Language Models.” As such, it’s one of Google’s first commercial products leveraging LLMs.

This automated analysis, end-to-end monitoring, and relevant recommendations appear in a dashboard UI. In terms of plans/pricing, Google Checks is available in three tiers:

Free: Helpful tools to complete your Google Play Data safety section
Premium: Helping you manage privacy compliance across your app portfolio (5 seats, 4 monthly reports)
Enterprise: Comprehensive data monitoring to help meet your bespoke privacy needs (Unlimited sets, reports)

Google says “Checks has experienced tremendous growth over the past year” across gaming, health, finance, education, and retail sectors with current users “representing over 3+ billion in collective downloads.”