If you’re an Android user, you’ve probably trusted Google with mountains of your own personal data over the last couple of decades. Now, a new privacy policy update suggests that the company is finally dipping into that data to target personalized ads, and you can’t opt out with disabling Personal Intelligence.
As spotted by Android Authority (via The Verge), Google’s new privacy policy update — which went into effect one week ago on October 16th — adds new language surrounding how the company uses data from Gmail, Drive, and Photos to target ads. Previously, the policy specifically stated that personalized ads were not “based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos,” but following this change, the sentence no longer stops there. Google now continues on with a pretty big caveat: “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.”
Obviously, that sentence reads about as intentionally vague as possible, so let’s draw a clearer circle around it: this is a change that revolves around Google’s AI initiative, and the choice the company is referring to here is the decision to enable Personal Intelligence across your account. Personal Intelligence first began rolling out in beta at the start of this year, and allows for Gemini to share data between various apps, including Gmail, Photos, Search, Drive, and more.
You may choose to allow certain Google services, including services like Search or Gemini Apps, to access data from other Google services you use, such as Google Photos and Workspace apps like Gmail and Drive, in order to provide you with a more personalized experience, subject to the policies and settings of the accessing service. For example, Search may process some of the data that you allow Search to access to personalize content, including ads.
In other words, while Google hasn’t explicitly revealed your cloud storage, inbox, or photo collection to advertisers, it has opened the door to allowing advertisers to target ads based on that connected content as it appears in spaces like Search. The company still says advertisers won’t be able to see personally identifying details, including your name and email address, to advertisers without your permission; that language remains unchanged from previous policy versions.
Personal Intelligence remains opt-in (for the time being), but if this sort of change freaks you out, you might want to verify your Google account settings are where you want them to be. To do so, head to Data & privacy under your My Account page, selection Personalization settings, then select Manage Personalized Recommendations in Search services. You can also disable Personalized Recommendations entirely by clicking the Turn off button on this page.
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Will Sattelberg is a writer and podcaster at 9to5Google.
You can reach out to Will at will@9to5mac.com, or find him on Twitter @will_sattelberg
