To me it's clear that this is in it's early phases, and as it's only available on Pixel devices and not to the general public I think it's safe to say this is p

To me it's clear that this is in it's early phases, and as it's only available on Pixel devices and not to the general public I think it's safe to say this is part of it's testing. However, as you said, if this is always a requirement then it doesn't affect privacy at all, which to me would be a real shame but this is Google after all. We just have to wait and see for now.