What do Google’s Gemini privacy changes actually mean?

A Google email about Gemini privacy is causing quite the stir. The alarm came from a change in what the chatbot can access when your history is turned off. However, the update’s implications are far less sensational than initially feared.

Here’s the heart of the email that set off the hubbub in the otherwise sleepy summer tech press. “Gemini will soon be able to help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” (Emphasis is ours.) The email also noted that the change starts rolling out automatically on July 7. So, that bold part sounds pretty bad, right? Gemini is just rifling through our texts, no matter what we say??!

In this case, the change is no more concerning than, well, anything else AI companies do with your data. Before this update, Gemini’s Apps Activity Setting had to be on to use those extensions. If you wanted to let Gemini handle tasks like making calls or sending texts, you need to save your conversations. If not, you couldn’t use Gemini’s Phone, Messages, WhatsApp or Utilities extensions.

In other words, you had to store your chats on Google’s servers to get Gemini’s full power. (Google still stores them for 72 hours even when it’s off. But that mandatory period has been in place since Gemini was still called Bard.) That also meant your interactions could be used to train Google’s AI models.

What’s happening now appears to be better for privacy. Now, you can leave the chatbot’s history off and still use those features. You still don’t have to use the extensions. If you do, Google won’t train on them or store them for more than three days if your Apps Activity is off.

The update is likely a case of Google paving the way for Gemini to replace Google Assistant on Android. (That happens later this year.) Those are the kinds of tasks a phone’s default assistant will need to handle. Gemini is already the de facto assistant on Pixel handsets.

In a statement sent to Engadget, Google helped to clarify the confusion. “This update is good for users: they can now use Gemini to complete daily tasks on their mobile devices like send messages, initiate phone calls, and set timers while Gemini Apps Activity is turned off. With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. As always, users can turn off Gemini’s connection to apps at any time by navigating to https://gemini.google.com/apps.”

So, this appears to be a storm in a teacup among a tech press eager for something interesting to cover during slow season. But you know what? I’m cool with that. It’s good to be concerned about AI privacy. You’d better be if you’re using these services. If some of our competitors jumped the gun in declaring this an emergency when it wasn’t, well… that’s much better than shrugging these things off.