Google updated its privacy policy on October 16 and added an exception. If a user turns on Personal Intelligence and connects data from Gmail, Google Photos and Drive to Search or Gemini, that content may be used for personalization, including ads.
The old policy said Google would not show personalized ads based on what is in Drive, Gmail and Photos. The new version adds a condition to that sentence: it does not apply when users themselves open their data to other services. The new wording says Search can process data the user has allowed it to access, with the stated purpose:
"to personalize content, including ads."
According to a third-party policy change log, this version was originally due to take effect on October 1 and was later pushed back to October 16.
Where Google drew its lines
Faced with criticism, Google offered several limits, and the wording is carefully chosen:
- Ads will not be "directly" based on the contents of a user's Gmail inbox or photos;
- Advertisers do not get access to a user's connected Gmail or photos, or to identity information;
- No personalized ads are shown for sensitive categories such as race, religion, sexual orientation and health.
The qualifier "directly" leaves room. Techlicious's rundown points out that Search does not train generative models directly on the inbox, but it does use summaries, excerpts and inferences drawn from emails and files to train and improve products. The policy text also says that when an email or file is short, or highly relevant to a request, "the summary may be the entire email or file," meaning the summary can be the full text. Some data may also be reviewed by Google employees and outside service providers; they generally do not look at the underlying photos and videos, except in cases of abuse or harm or when users submit feedback.
Google has not published details on how these "summaries" and "inferences" move through the advertising system or how long they are kept, so outsiders cannot currently verify it.
How many steps it takes to turn it off
Personal Intelligence is an opt-in feature, and users who have not turned it on are unaffected. For those who already have, here is the path compiled by Techlicious:
- In your Google Account, go to Search Services Personalization;
- Under Additional Personal Intelligence, open Connected Content Apps and disconnect Workspace or Photos;
- Turn off Personalized Recommendations;
- In Gmail settings, find the Google Workspace smart features and turn them off separately;
- Go to My Activity and delete the Search services records that have been kept.
Two things are easy to miss. Turning off personalized ads only in My Ad Center does not necessarily stop information from connected apps from being used for AI personalization and model improvement. And disconnecting an app does not automatically erase information Search has already collected.
How much it matters for Chinese-language users
Users in mainland China cannot normally use Google services, so the direct impact falls on Chinese-language users in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and overseas, especially those who rely on Gmail and Photos as primary tools and have tried "connected apps" in Gemini. When Personal Intelligence rolled out to paid users worldwide in April, Europe was excluded. The EU has stricter consent requirements for using personal data in advertising, and Google has not separately explained how this exception will apply there.
AI assistants from Chinese companies are moving in the same direction, with more and more features that plug into email, photo libraries and calendars. Under China's Personal Information Protection Law, processing sensitive personal information requires separate consent, and faces and health-related content in photo libraries could fall within that scope. How clearly an authorization prompt is written, and whether data is deleted after you switch it off, are questions this set of Google terms offers a sample to check against, clause by clause.
Sources: The Verge, CocoLoop, Techlicious, Google Privacy Policy; differences between old and new terms were compared using the policy change log, and the opt-out path follows Google Account settings pages.