Google Gemini is now asking users to let it train on their personal email and photos, and offering up bizarre reasons why this is meant to be good. It is not, and the timing of the news is suspicious.
So on the one hand, Google Gemini is now coming to Apple Intelligence, and it’s coming with all of Apple’s rigid privacy protections. But on the other, in the same week that was announced, Google is suddenly trying to get Gemini users to entirely ignore privacy.
Specifically, Google wants Gemini users in the US to join a beta program and authorize the service to scrape Gmail, Google Photos, and YouTube. Google calls this Personal Intelligence, and the company’s Josh Woodward offers real-world examples of how great this is.
The examples are not great. For instance, Woodward says he was buying tires for his car, and didn’t know the size. You know, despite it being on the tire, the previous receipt, in the car user manual, and maybe on a placard inside the door.
“These days any chatbot can find these tire specs, but Gemini went further,” he wrote in a blog post. Of course, you’d expect Google writers to be excited about Google products, on the Google blog.
Reportedly, Gemini pointed out that you may need different tires depending on whether you’re making longer trips in all weather conditions. It referenced “our family road trips to Oklahoma found in Google Photos” when it informed the Google employee how to do this.
You do not need to train AI to know someone once drove to Oklahoma, in order to know there are different types of tires. Not even if that might tip you off that advertisers in the region that you could be coming back.
As Craig Federighi said back in 2018, “If you want to get pictures of mountains, you don’t need to get it out of people’s personal photo libraries.”
In this case, an AI that doesn’t automatically return the information that the right tires depend on your situation, is not a safe AI.
Woodward digs in, though, with another reason why Gemini’s Personal Intelligence is simply essential in routine transactions like buying tires. Apparently he needed his license plate number and couldn’t remember it, so was happy for Gemini to pull it out of a photo.
You remember your childhood phone numbers, so you can remember your license plate. Or take a picture of it in your private Apple Photos library. It’ll come in handy the next time you’re in a big parking lot.
Or let Maps do it for you, and not tell anybody else or another big tech company where your car is parked.
Anyway, Google is not the first to try getting you to turn over personal information that is more useful to advertisers than it is to you. But it’s not nice doing this in the same week as reports of its deal with Apple have emphasized the genuine privacy benefits of it.
When Google Gemini is available via Apple Intelligence, it will provide all of the AI capabilities it can — and it will not get to use and keep and sell your personal data.
We’ve been very, very clear about this.
“In the end, as we here at AppleInsider have stated many times before, on this page, in the forums, on the podcast, and everywhere we cast a shadow, Apple’s long game in artificial intelligence will result in a more private, secure, environmentally friendly, and ethical system. Even as the AI bubble pops, Apple’s competitors can’t hope to match that ecosystem, not even Google.
Right now, you have to be invited to Google’s new Personal Intelligence beta test. Even if you are deep into using Google’s services, ignore the invitation and wait until Gemini can be accessed privately through Apple Intelligence.
That way, Google doesn’t get to target advertising to you.