If You Use Gmail, You May Want To Disable This Automatic Setting Now Before It’s Too Late

Another day, another “feature” turned on in a load bearing app that you might want to turn off.

For Gmail users, there’s an automatic opt-in that could allow Google access to your email data (think: your personal and work messages, your attachments) “to train AI models”, cyber security experts claim. If you do not want this information shared, you must adjust your settings.

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“IMPORTANT message for everyone who uses Gmail. You have automatically OPT-IN to allow Gmail to access all your private messages and attachments to train AI models,” said Engineer Dave Jones on X earlier this week. “You have to manually turn off Smart Features in the Setting menu in TWO places.”

@eevblog / Via Twitter: @eevblog

In the race for companies to get ROI on AI, we’re already seeing language learning models run out of new human-generated data to train on. And as HuffPost previously reported, tools like AI assistants that automatically take meeting notes were already being seen as an opportunity to passively obtain data from users in work settings. (Even boring corporate meetings are not exempt!)

“Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s AI models and build products and features such as Google Translate, Gemini Apps, and Cloud AI capabilities,” according to the company’s privacy policy.

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Notably, Bloomberg reports that there is already a proposed class action lawsuit against Google. According to the complaint, the users are alleging that the company “secretly” turned on Gemini to “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received in their Gmail accounts.”

Google did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s question about the process for opting users in and out of these features, or the class action lawsuit. A Google spokesperson told HuffPost via email that the reports are “misleading,” noting that “Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model.” The spokesperson added, “we are always transparent and clear if we make changes to our terms of service and policies.”

However, if you still want more control over how AI is used in your life (the Pew Research Center reports that 6 out of 10 Americans share this concern), there is some good news: You can turn it off.

Read on to find out how.

Disabling the Gmail AI-Training Opt-In

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To turn this feature off, you have to open your settings and manually close it in two different places.

On the desktop, go to your settings (the little icon in the top corner) and look for the “General” tab. There, you can do your first opt-out and uncheck “Smart features”

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Next, you click on “Manage smart Workplace feature settings” (pictured above), and it will take you to a secondary pop-up that allows you to turn features on and off in Google Workspace and other Google products.

Choosing the former will turn off the “Ask Gemini” feature that summarizes content, as well as personalized search and events from your email will be automatically added to your calendar.

The latter will opt you out of features that show restaurant reservations and takeout orders in Maps, suggested tickets or loyalty cards to use in Wallet and responses, reminders and suggestions from Google Assistant and the Gemini app.

If you are on mobile, you can change these settings by going to your settings page (located at the bottom of the inbox menu) and selecting “Data privacy”. From there, you can toggle “Smart features” and click in the “Google Workspace smart features” menu to turn the feature back on for Workspace and Google products.

An annoying part of this is that some useful Gmail features that we’ve gotten used to are eliminated by opting out. Things like “smart compose”, as well as the feature that automatically filters your emails into “promotional” and “social” boxes, and even spell check, grammar check and autocorrect are currently tied to the gemini opt-in.

So, as you choose not to share your information, you may want to consider whether you’re willing to lose some features in exchange. And you should probably read your emails a bit more carefully.

But for many concerned with their privacy, this is better than letting something else do it.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.

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