Google's AI Now Searches Your Emails, Photos, and Files to Answer Pers

Google's Personal Intelligence feature connects Gemini directly to your Gmail, Google Drive, Photos, YouTube, and Search. Ask Gemini "What did my boss say about the deadline last week?" and it searches your emails for the answer. Ask "Find the beach photos from last summer" and it locates them in your Google Photos library.

The Privacy Question Everyone Is Asking

The obvious concern: is Google reading your emails to train its AI? Google says no. The company states that it does not use personal emails, documents, or photos to train its foundational Gemini models. The AI processes your data only to answer your specific question and does not retain it afterward.

Still, the feature touches what is essentially a personal archive, communication history, identity documents, financial records, family photos. Forbes framed the issue precisely: this is ultimately a question about user agency in the age of AI.

Switching Made Easy

In a notable competitive move, Google also launched a chat history import tool that lets users transfer conversations and preferences from ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI assistants directly into Gemini.