Make compromises: Many people store a large portion of their lives in Gmail and Google Photos, from flight bookings and receipts to years of family photos. For years, Google has said that none of this content is used to choose which ads to display. There is now an exception to this promise – and it applies to anyone who lets the company’s AI crawl through these apps.
The change is included in Google’s updated privacy policy, which went into effect on October 16 and was first spotted by Android Authority. The policy has long stated: “We will not show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos.” That line is still there, but now ends with a qualifier: “Unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.”
A separate new passage says Search may process the data it has access to to personalize content, including ads.
The exception primarily affects Personal Intelligence, an opt-in feature that allows Gemini and AI Mode in Search to pull context from apps like Gmail and Photos. It launched in January for paying subscribers before reaching all US users in March. So when someone asks AI Mode about activities for an upcoming trip, they can check the hotel confirmation in Gmail and old vacation pictures before responding.
While the search giant says that ads are not based directly on a person’s Gmail inbox or photo library, its support page explains that the AI mode may rely on summaries, excerpts and conclusions from connected apps, and that the same information can be used to serve ads. However, advertisers still do not have access to these apps and sensitive categories such as health, religion and sexual orientation remain off-limits for ad targeting.
The company has also started testing AI mode ads for people with personal intelligence enabled. Back in March, it said that the experience would remain ad-free for now, but expected that ads for connected users would work similarly later.
Gmail ads used to work very differently. Google has been scanning free accounts to target them – a practice that has led to lawsuits and constant criticism from privacy advocates. The company only stopped scanning inboxes for personalized advertising in 2017, and Gmail continued to run ads targeting other data like search and YouTube activity.
The new wording appears to be the first time since Google’s own policy allows inbox content to play a role in ads, even if only indirectly.
Luckily there is still a way out. If you’d rather keep it away from your inbox, you can separate Gmail and Google Photos under Connected Content Apps, which you can find in your Google Account’s Search Personalization Settings.
Another option is to turn off ad personalization in My Ad Center. However, this does not necessarily prevent connected apps from being able to use the AI functions.
