Google’s promise to keep Gmail out of your ads now has an AI exception

Google‘s privacy policy used to carry a flat promise: no personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail or Photos. The sentence is still there, but it now ends with a condition, “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.” Google already has a feature built to do exactly that.

That feature is Personal Intelligence, the opt-in setting that lets AI Mode in Google Search read your Gmail and Google Photos so its answers can draw on your own emails and pictures. Google’s AI search tools can show sponsored results. If your inbox is connected, what Search learns from it can now feed the ads it shows you, and the privacy policy says so in writing.

The policy spells out the mechanism with an example of its own: “Search may process some of the data that you allow Search to access to personalize content, including ads.” The change was spotted by Android Authority and reported by The Verge, Ars Technica and 9to5Google. The rest of the advertising section stays as it was. Google still says it does not target ads on sensitive categories such as race, religion, sexual orientation or health, and it does not give advertisers your name or email address unless you ask it to.

Google’s own reading is narrower. In a statement to Ars Technica, the company said connecting apps “is entirely opt-in,” that ads “will continue to be relevant to things like your query, the context of the response and your interests,” and that they “will not be based directly on your Gmail inbox or Photos library.” A spokesperson added that nothing changes in what advertising partners receive. Ars read the statement as a roundabout confirmation: once AI Mode pulls something from your inbox into an answer, that answer is part of the context that picks the ad.

“Opt-in” also carries less weight than it sounds. Google has pushed Personal Intelligence with prompts and pop-ups that, as Ars Technica points out, rarely explain the consequences, so plenty of people may have switched it on without noticing. The policy does not say which kinds of Gmail or Photos data count, how long they shape what you see, or whether an AI summary of an email still counts as content from Gmail.

Reach is the other reason one clause matters. Personal Intelligence began as a paid Labs feature for US subscribers. At its I/O developer conference in May, Google opened it in AI Mode to people in nearly 200 countries and territories across 98 languages, with no subscription required. The privacy policy is a single document for Google accounts, with an extra section for people covered by European Union or UK data protection law, so the new wording is not an American footnote. The Gemini app itself does not show ads for now, according to Ars Technica; the change concerns ads around Search’s AI tools.

Turning it off is possible but buried. In your Google Account, open Data & privacy, then Personalization settings, then Manage Personalized Recommendations in Search Services, then Connected Content Apps, where Gmail, Drive and Google Photos can be disconnected. The same page has a button to switch personalized recommendations off entirely, and Ars Technica notes that the connected apps can also be removed from the Personal Intelligence settings in Gemini.

The new wording has applied since October 16, the date on the current version of the policy, so anyone who already connected their apps is covered by it. Google has said Google Calendar is the next app it plans to plug into Personal Intelligence, which would put your appointments in the same pool as your inbox.

Tags: Folarin Balogun, Google, Meghan Markle, privacy, advertising, AI Mode

Google’s promise to keep Gmail out of your ads now has an AI exception

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