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If you’ve been on social media lately, you might have seen a viral warning claiming that Google quietly updated its settings to start harvesting your personal emails to train its Gemini AI models. It sounded troubling, plausible, and—according to Google—it is completely false.
Google has officially pushed back against these “misleading reports,” confirming that Gmail content is not used to train its generative AI models.
How this all started
The controversy kicked off last week when viral posts (and even a report from security firm Malwarebytes, which has since issued a correction) accused Google of automatically opting users into AI training via the “Smart features and personalization” setting in Gmail.
The concern was that by leaving this setting on—which powers things like Smart Compose, tab sorting, and automatic calendar events from emails—users were unwittingly feeding their private data directly to Gemini.
Google’s clear denial
In response to the uproar, Google issued a statement directly refuting the claims. The company emphasized that no user settings have been changed and that the “Smart features” in question have existed for years. These features use your data to personalize your individual experience (like suggesting a reply or filtering spam), but that data stays within your account and is not used to train the broader public AI models.
Why the confusion persists
While Google’s denial is firm, the confusion isn’t entirely baseless. A class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month does allege privacy violations regarding Gemini’s access to data, which likely fueled the fire. Additionally, some users reported finding their “Smart features” setting re-enabled after previously turning it off. This may be due to a January update that separated these controls for different Google products, causing some settings to reset or appear new.
But here is the bottom line: your emails aren’t training Gemini. However, if you’re uncomfortable with Google scanning your emails even for helpful features like package tracking or spell check, you can still head to Gmail Settings > General > Smart features and personalization and turn them off completely.
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