Thank god they also got consent from the non google people who sent the email.

Google can read the emails of everyone who corresponds with a Gmail user - which is almost everyone - and they can't opt out.

Link for the lazy: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/general

Find "Smart Features", uncheck, and press save, which will reload Gmail.

Then find "Google Workspace smart features" and click the "Manage Workspace smart features settings" button and unselect everything.

Google will use your family's pictures and memories "to improve Google’s AI assistants, like Smart Compose or AI-generated replies."

Someone will ask a Google AI service to generate an image some day and your daughter will be used. And that's one of the least worrying outcomes.

They're claiming that these options allow Google to use your data to train its AI, but that's not what it says at all. Where are they getting that idea from?

Oh Well, I left gmail years ago, now it is used for junk mail, good luck loading ads going to gmail into your AI :)

From the dialogues in the pictures it doesn’t sound like they are using anyones emails for training. The messaging indicates it’s more like using as context and/or generating embeddings for RAG. Unless there’s something else I’m not aware of.

I know that Google does a lot of bad stuff but we don’t need to make up stuff they just aren’t doing

This doomsday messaging an alarmism is only serves to degrade the whole cause

edit: and before someone say that they also don’t want that then let’s criticize it for what it is (opting users to feature without consent). We don’t need to make stuff up, it really doesn’t help.

Funny how the law and the corporations see the meaning of "optional" differently.

The article is useful overall, but the following line is such bad journalism that I want to call it out, since we can't afford to have people dumbed-down.

> The reason behind this is Google’s push to power new Gmail features with its Gemini AI, helping you write emails faster and manage your inbox more efficiently.

Reading comprehension and media literacy at all-time lows, below what cognitive scientists formerly believed was a hard floor of "absolute zero comprehension".

It's like with Gemini and Google smart devices. You need to opt-in for data training to use Gemini apps. This means you won't be able to access basic features like asking Gemini to turn off your smart light bulbs. Essentially, Google is preventing you from using any smart features unless you allow data training on your own. Even to access basic features like chat history, you need to enable Gemini activity. This essentially allows Google to train on all of your conversations. This is even for paid tiers

Ha ! I disabled the smart features in gmail and then used gemini to ask something unrelated. The massage ended with:

"By the way, to unlock the full functionality of all Apps, enable Gemini Apps Activity." with a link to myactivitydotgoogledotcom