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Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

53 points by causenad

by dwroberts

2 subcomments

When you disable all of these features, eventually it turns off email categorisation.
At first this was annoying to me because it’s obviously a very good feature. But the last few weeks have been quite revealing: I’ve been receiving and unsubscribing from tons of emails I had no idea I even received regularly, because categories buried them away.
I wonder how much of newsletter marketing (and paid email marketing) is being propped up by the GMail categories just silently ingesting tons of stuff that people never read or see (but also never unsubscribe from)

by tietjens

14 subcomments

The only reason I am still using gmail is due to choice paralysis. I do not know which email service to choose and pay for. I do not like Proton. Is Fastmail the way to go? There is also the German one posteo. Should I just use Apple's mail? I'm taking suggestions if you have anything to share.

by Cthulhu_

0 subcomment

I feel like the same thing happened 20 years ago when gmail was introduced and the words were "Google reads your emails to serve you ads".

by trubadors

1 subcomments

Who cares? I'm happy with Tuta Mail, they said they won't join the AI bandwaggon.

by konart

1 subcomments

by wowamit

0 subcomment

With so many settings spread across multiple sections, especially in Workspace accounts, it's challenging to keep track of how existing settings are affected by each new addition. I generally review these regularly, yet find surprises now and then.
Knowing what setting does what in Gmail is becoming difficult by the day.

by sneak

1 subcomments

Interestingly, “we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model” (what they said) does not mean the same thing as “we don’t use your Gmail content to train AI” (what was asserted).
Anyone using Gmail and expecting it to be private or not leveraged against them is a fool.

by josefritzishere

0 subcomment

Google is making both the comunications and the AI disable as arcane as might be legally defensible. They know what they are doing is wrong, so they are setting up their future legal argument for the inevitable class action lawsuit.

by agluszak

2 subcomments

> Enabling the feature in Workspace says that “you agree to let Google Workspace use your Workspace content and activity to personalize your experience across Workspace,” according to the settings page, but according to Google, that does not mean handing over the content of your emails to use for AI training.
Google be like: "trust me bro"

by ljlolel

3 subcomments

Some people worked on this. They don’t train on it directly. They use AI to rewrite the content “privacy-safe” then train on that….