Field note
Gemini Personal Intelligence: Privacy Review
Personal Intelligence lets a personal Gemini account draw on Gmail, Photos, Search history and more, and Google may use what it learns to improve its models, so a business needs a clear line between personal Gemini and work data.
Personal Intelligence lets a personal Gemini account draw on Gmail, Photos, Search history and more, and Google may use what it learns to improve its models, so a business needs a clear line between personal Gemini and work data.
What Personal Intelligence is
Personal Intelligence is a personalisation feature for personal Google accounts. Google's help says the user must be 18 or over, signed in with a personal account and have Keep Activity on. It is not available on work, school or supervised accounts. When it is on, the user can connect Contacts, Google Photos (in eligible countries), Google Wallet (US only), Google Workspace (the personal account's Gmail, Calendar, Drive and similar), Search services and YouTube.
Google describes the purpose as creating "insights about you, your relationships, and people in your world", doing things for you such as recommendations and itineraries, and finding and summarising content from those apps.
At the time of writing Google's help states the feature is not available in the United Kingdom, the European Economic Area, Switzerland or Nigeria. It is being released gradually and the list can change, so a UK business should review it now rather than after it appears on a member of staff's phone.
Why a UK business should care
Four statements in Google's own documentation matter for an employer.
First, data from connected apps, in the form of summaries, excerpts and inferences, may be used to train generative AI models and a subset is reviewed by human reviewers, with steps taken to reduce personal information first. Google's advice is blunt: do not connect apps that contain personal or confidential information you would not want used for training.
Second, "if new data is added to these apps in the future, Gemini will have access to that data". Connecting personal Gmail once means every future email is in scope.
Third, the data used may relate to topics Google lists as sensitive, including race, religion and health, and Gemini may infer relationships from photos, including by associating faces with locations and timestamps.
Fourth, disconnecting an app or deleting data in it does not delete what is already in Gemini Apps Activity.
None of that is a problem for a person using their own account for their own life. It becomes the business's problem when a personal Gmail receives forwarded work mail, when a personal Drive holds client files, or when a personal phone's contacts include customers and colleagues.
The review
| Connected app | What it exposes | Question for the business |
|---|---|---|
| Google Workspace (personal) | Emails, files, events | Does any work content sit in this personal account? |
| Contacts | Names, numbers, addresses, birthdays from the device | Are customer or staff contacts stored on the personal phone? |
| Google Photos | Photos, faces, places, inferred relationships | Are site photos, whiteboards or ID documents in the library? |
| Search services | Search, Maps, Shopping history | Does work research run through a personal account? |
| YouTube | Watch and search history | Low business risk |
The user-side controls Google documents are: choosing apps at opt-in (connect all, choose apps, or do not connect); the Connected Apps settings page; turning Personal Intelligence off for a single chat under Tools; the "Try without personalisation" option on a response; temporary chats; and turning Keep Activity off, which stops future chats being used for improvement but also disables Personal Intelligence entirely. Deleting Gemini Apps Activity removes data that has not already been reviewed.
What to write into policy
- Work data lives on work accounts only. A work Gemini account under Workspace terms is not used to train models and stays within the organisation.
- No forwarding of work email to personal Gmail. This rule predates AI, but it now has a new consequence.
- Staff may use personal Gemini for general tasks, but not with customer, employee or supplier data. The business does not inspect personal settings; it sets the boundary on what enters the personal account.
- On BYOD devices, treat the personal Gemini app like any other personal app: keep the work account in the managed container and out of personal Gemini.
- HR and people data follows the AI chatbot HR data boundaries note. The review method mirrors the ChatGPT memory privacy review.
Where the boundary is soft
Three places need a specific decision. Gemini in Chrome works with Personal Intelligence where it is available, so a personal Chrome profile on a work laptop joins personal insights to work tabs. Contacts can come from the device as well as from Google Contacts, so a personal phone that holds work numbers is already in scope. And Google notes that deleting or updating data in a connected app may not affect Gemini for days, so a late clean-up is not an immediate fix.