Google Responds To Privacy Concern Backlash About Gemini AI Data Collection

An e-mail recently sent by Google regarding Gemini's chat recording stirred up a bit of brouhaha in the tech space due to its wording, leading users to believe their chats were saved indefinitely, even if history was turned off. As it turns out, what happened is nearly the opposite and that Google actually improved the level of privacy for the service to an extent. Let's dig in.

The email in question started out that Google was making easier for "Gemini to interact with your device", and that Gemini would work in Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, and utilities regardless of whether Gemini App Activity was turned on or off. Given this wording, a lot of people rightfully took it to mean that Gemini would be always saving the conversations no matter if you explicitly asked it to. This is particularly relevant in this day and age when the ol' Google Assistant is getting quickly and swiftly replaced by Gemini.


Around here, we lend credence to conscious, crystal-clear communication, and the aforementioned email was less so, as it turns out that the end result is additional privacy controls. You see, by default, Gemini App Activity saves all your interactions with Gemini for a long time, for the purpose of the bot having contextual info and Google being able to train it further on your data. Disabling this setting limits the saved data to a 72-hour period, a timeframe that Google says is justified in order to "provide the service, maintain its safety and security, and process any feedback you choose to provide."

The change that occurred was that previously, disabling this long history would prevent Gemini from functioning altogether. Now Google will let you enable it for Phone, Messages, Whatsapp, and system utilities, on a per-app selection basis, even with the reduced timeframe of data collection. This can be generally considered a relative win for user privacy. In a statement to Engadget, Google very specifically says that "with Gemini Apps Activity turned off, [your] Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve AI models." If only the company had been this clear the first time around.