Take a first look at Apple and Google's ambitious new COVID-19 contact tracing technology that will send you a notification if you were near someone who has the coronavirus

Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Business Insider

• Apple and Google are preparing to roll out their ambitious COVID-19 contact tracing technology that uses Bluetooth in people's smartphones to detect when they come in contact with someone who's already tested positive for coronavirus.
• The technology is meant to be incorporated with apps made by government health agencies, which will be responsible for verifying and logging people's COVID-19 status.
• Every device will have a unique "diagnosis key" that health agencies can use to verify people's COVID-19 status.
• Apple and Google published new images Monday showing what the interface will look like on people's iPhones and Androids. Take a look.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple and Google have embarked on their biggest collaboration ever over the past month, building a platform that will turn nearly every smartphone on the planet into a tool for tracking COVID-19.

Now, the two companies are providing a first look at how the new technology will work on iPhones and Androids.

New screenshots published Monday show how the contact tracing software will use Bluetooth to detect other smartphones in close proximity and alert people if they come into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19.

Apple and Google will push the new software to people's smartphones automatically later this month, and it's meant to be incorporated into COVID-19 apps developed by government health agencies across the globe.

It will be up to those agencies to decide how exactly to send people COVID-19 notifications using the technology, representatives for Apple and Google said during a press briefing Monday.

Experts predict that the technology will have to overcome a few major obstacles. One is minimizing the number of false positives — smartphones can detect Bluetooth signals through walls and from far away, and it's not clear how the apps will rule out those interactions. Another is verifying people's COVID-19 status to prevent trolls or misinformed people from falsely claiming to have the virus. Even more impactful is the limited scale of testing, which could mean many unreported cases of coronavirus.

Apple and Google are signaling that solving these problems will fall to public health agencies. The two companies said governments have been given the underlying app code to experiment with Bluetooth detection in the coming weeks, and user interface screenshots published Monday show an option for health agencies to input a unique "Diagnosis Key" to verify that someone has COVID-19.

Here's what the COVID-19 contact tracing technology from Apple and Google will look like.