Take shortcuts: Many people keep much of their lives stored in Gmail and Google Photos, from flight reservations and receipts to years of family photos. For years, Google has said none of this content will be used to select which ads it sees. That promise now comes with an exception — and it applies to anyone who lets the company’s AI poke around in these apps.
The change is contained in Google’s updated privacy policy, which went into effect on October 16 and was first spotted by Android Authority. The policy has long said: “We don’t show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos.” That line is still there, but it now ends with a qualifier: “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.”
A separate new passage says search can process data people give it access to personalize content, including ads.
The exception mainly concerns Personal Intelligence, an optional feature that allows Gemini and AI Mode in Search to extract context from apps like Gmail and Photos. It launched for paid subscribers in January before reaching all US users in March. So if someone asks AI Mode for things to do on an upcoming trip, they can check their hotel confirmation in Gmail and past vacation photos before responding.
While the search giant says ads won’t be based directly on a person’s Gmail inbox or photo library, its support page explains that AI Mode can draw on summaries, snippets, and inferences from connected apps, and that same information can be used to serve ads. However, advertisers still cannot access these apps, and sensitive categories such as health, religion and sexual orientation remain prohibited from ad targeting.
The company has also started testing AI-mode ads for people with personal intelligence enabled. Back in March, he said the experience would remain ad-free for now, although he expected ads to work the same for logged in users down the line.
Gmail ads used to work very differently. Google has been scanning free accounts to target them – a practice that has sparked lawsuits and continued criticism from privacy advocates. The company only stopped analyzing inboxes for ad personalization in 2017, and Gmail continued to serve targeted ads with other data such as search and YouTube activity.
The new wording appears to be the first time since then that Google’s own policy has allowed inbox content to play a role in ads, if only indirectly.
Fortunately, there is still a way out. If you prefer to keep your inbox out, you can disconnect Gmail and Google Photos under Connected Content Apps, which can be found in the Search services personalization settings of your Google account.
Another option is to turn off ad personalization in My Ad Center, although this doesn’t necessarily prevent connected apps from powering AI features.
Gn tech
