Google has integrated Gemini into many apps and services like Drive, Search, Workspace, and more. However, with AI being integrated deeply into everyday apps to boost productivity, it seems privacy and security are taking a hit. One such example is where AI can access a folder where you save all your important documents but without you knowing. Naturally, you will be worried just how much access AI has.

Gemini Summarising Private Files?

An X (Twitter) user Kevin Bankston opened his tax return file (PDF) and Gemini automatically summarized it. What is concerning is that he never asked Gemini to do that. Is Google reading documents stored in your Drive account without permission? Take this with a grain of salt but it seems that is the case.

The user claims he neither asked Gemini to summarize his tax return file nor fed the data manually. Nonetheless, Gemini took the liberty of summarizing his tax return for him.

Next, he asked Gemini how to disable that setting so this doesn't happen again in the future. Unfortunately, Gemini suffered from 'AI hallucination' giving wrong instructions as the setting didn't exist at the location. After about 15 minutes, he found the correct settings menu but it was already turned off. Then how did Gemini summarize the PDF file without explicit command from the user? It appears that if you use the Gemini option in Drive on any document, Gemini will take the liberty of scanning all the files in the same format (PDF in this case).

Immediately, the post went viral with different people chiming in their thoughts. Some thought it unwise to upload tax returns and other sensitive documents to the cloud while others said Google is digging into user data to train its AI models.

How to Manage Gemini Privacy Settings

You can turn this setting off in any of the Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Calendar or Drive. Here is an example below. Follow the steps if you don't want Gemini looking into or following what you are doing to generate responses:

  1. Open Google Drive web app in new tab.
  2. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner and open settings.
  3. Go to privacy and click on Manage Workspace smart feature settings option.
  4. Toggle off the Smart features in Google Workspace option and hit the "Save" button.

Note: Turning this setting off will automatically reflect on all other Google Workspace apps.

It is not that hard to manage Gemini's privacy settings, however, what is concerning is Gemini being able to read documents despite settings being disabled. Giving permission to access one file is not the same as giving permission to access all the files, even with the same extension. Maybe Google will release an update and fix this.