Google Warns of Privacy Risks with New AI Assistant “Gemini”
Key Points:
- Google’s new AI assistant, Gemini, collects your conversations, location, feedback, and usage information.
- Be cautious: This includes your actual conversations, not just summaries. They are stored for 3 years, even after deleting activity.
- Don’t share sensitive information: Google may use it to improve AI and might share it with human reviewers.
- Even turning off activity tracking doesn’t prevent conversations from being saved for 72 hours.
Additional Notes:
- This applies to all Gemini apps, not just the main assistant.
- Google claims they don’t sell your information but use it for internal purposes.
As much as the tech savvy folks on here can espouse trying to protect your own privacy by doing this or avoiding that, it’s just not a reasonable expectation and the burden to do better should be on the companies collecting data. The vast, vast majority of users won’t even be aware of what’s happening, and that means it’s everyone’s problem, or will be, whenever this blows up someday. You can try your best to avoid giving up your data, but none of it matters because everyone else in your life gave it up already. It’s all a villainous entreprise and I do believe it will blow up someday, maybe not even too far in the future.
I think most of that advice is given with good intentions, but it does ultimately feed into the establishment preference for punching down. “Climate change? Paper straws. AI violating your privacy? Nord VPN.”