Google Drive Gets Smarter: AI Now Hunts Down Ransomware Before It Wrecks Your Files

Google is rolling out a new AI-powered defense for Drive on desktop, designed to spot ransomware attacks before they spread like wildfire.

As The Verge reports, the system uses models trained on millions of real-world ransomware samples, pausing suspicious sync activity and giving users the chance to roll back to safer versions of their files.

This upgrade lands at a time when ransomware incidents are climbing. The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence counted more than 5,000 attacks worldwide in 2024 alone, a 15% jump from the previous year.

Attacks are hitting everyone—from hospitals to schools to multinational corporations—making resilience a bigger priority than ever.

Google’s move mirrors a broader industry push to bake AI into cybersecurity. Just last week, the European Central Bank tapped AI firm Feedzai to fight fraud in its upcoming digital euro, underscoring how central AI is becoming in protecting both data and money.

And the pressure isn’t only on the tech companies. Regulators are stepping in too.

In Brussels, conversations around the EU’s AI Act are intensifying, with policymakers calling for stricter safeguards on how AI is deployed in sensitive domains like finance and security.

Ransomware prevention fits squarely in that conversation—because once personal or business data gets encrypted by criminals, it’s usually too late.

Personally, I find this a fascinating shift. For years, cloud storage felt like a vault—safe, reliable, boring even.

But the truth is, attackers go where the data lives, and these days, that’s in the cloud.

Adding AI that not only watches for known signatures but adapts to novel threats feels like the right kind of paranoia.

The big test, though, will be whether everyday users actually notice and trust it—or if they’ll only care after they dodge their first ransomware bullet.