‘These reports are misleading’: Google denies claims that Gmail copies your emails to train its artificial intelligence

It is becoming increasingly complex to understand the principles behind generative AI. With Meta, X and even the UK government behind opt-out models, AI seems to be in a “steal first, ask permission later” state. All of this may go some way to explaining why hundreds of thousands of people believed that Google was copying users’ emails to train Google Gemini based on Google’s own wording.

Just last week, a X’s viral post managed to amass almost 150,000 likes (at the time of writing), claiming: “You have been automatically ENABLED to allow Gmail access to all your private messages and attachments to train AI models.”

I’m talking to EdgeGoogle spokeswoman Jenny Thomson says: “These reports are misleading – we haven’t changed anyone’s settings, Gmail’s smart features have been around for many years, and we don’t use Gmail content to train our Gemini AI model.”

So I hear you asking, what happened? Under its astute features options, Google explains that Gmail, Google Chat, and Google Meet “use your content and activity on these services to provide smart features and personalize your experience.”

The relative vagueness of this description and the employ of the word “intelligent” in a reading context raised red flags for many, who then took it as confirmation that Google was collecting data.

If you employ Google services, there’s a good chance you’ve checked the box to turn on astute features at some point.

How explained by GoogleSmart features can, for example, automatically add flights from your Gmail inbox to your calendar, or track incoming orders to let you know when your next package will arrive.

This confusion may be partly due to the fact that Google’s artificial intelligence, Gemini, can employ your astute features and information from Gmail if you allow it. You can ask it to create travel plans based on your information or check the prices of competing products (though if you’re shopping on Black Friday, humans will naturally beat the AI).

If you don’t want to allow astute features, go to all settings in any Google app, go to the General tab and scroll down to “Smart features.” Simply uncheck this box and the astute features will no longer be available.

While this doesn’t seem to be related to Google downloading content, it’s probably not a bad idea to be regularly reminded that you can opt out of astute features if they don’t seem so astute to you anymore.

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