Google's New AI Can Read Your Gmail—Here's How to Stop It

What Google Just Announced

On January 14, 2026, Google rolled out a feature called "Personal Intelligence" for its Gemini AI assistant. The pitch sounds convenient: Gemini can now dig through your Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube watch history, and Search activity to give you personalized answers.

Need to find your car's license plate number? Gemini can pull it from an old photo. Planning a family trip? It'll check your past travel patterns and email receipts. According to Google VP Josh Woodward, Personal Intelligence has "two core strengths: reasoning across complex sources and retrieving specific details."

The problem is that "reasoning across your data" means an AI is reading your private emails, analyzing your photos, and tracking what you watch and search for online.

What Data Gemini Can Access

Personal Intelligence doesn't just skim the surface. According to Google's official blog post, the AI can access:

• Gmail messages and attachments
• Google Photos and saved images
• Google Calendar events
• Google Drive documents
• YouTube watch history
• Google Search history
• Shopping, News, Maps, Flights, and Hotels searches

That's essentially your entire digital footprint inside the Google ecosystem—every email you've sent, every photo you've taken, every video you've watched, and every search query you've made.

Google's Privacy Claims

Google insists the feature is privacy conscious. Here's what they say:

• It's opt in: Personal Intelligence is off by default. You must manually enable it in Gemini's settings.
• You control which apps connect: You can choose to link Gmail but not Photos, or vice versa.
• Your data isn't used for training: Google claims they "don't train our systems to learn your license plate number" but rather train them to understand how to find such information.
• Data stays within Google: Your information isn't transmitted elsewhere—it already lives on Google's servers.

That last point should give you pause. Google is essentially saying, "Don't worry, we already have all your data. Now we're just letting AI read it."

The Real Privacy Concerns

Even with opt in consent, Personal Intelligence raises serious questions:

Over personalization risks: Google admits the AI might "make connections between unrelated topics." If your ex loved baseball and you have photos from games, Gemini might incorrectly assume you're a baseball fan—and serve you recommendations based on a relationship that ended years ago.

Sensitive data exposure: While Google says Gemini avoids "proactive assumptions about sensitive data like health," users can still ask about such topics directly. This means the AI has access to your health related emails and photos—it just won't volunteer that information unprompted.

Two tiered privacy: Users in the EU, UK, and Japan have stricter privacy protections by default. American users, meanwhile, are more exposed to data collection. This echoes the ongoing controversy over Google's AI training practices.

The consent problem: "Opt in" sounds good until you realize most people don't read settings. Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers—the only users who currently have access—are paying for premium features. How many will question whether to enable a feature they're paying for?

How to Check and Disable Personal Intelligence

If you're a Google AI Pro or AI Ultra subscriber, here's how to check your settings:

1. Open the Gemini app or go to gemini.google.com
2. Tap Settings
3. Select Personal Intelligence
4. Review Connected Apps to see which services Gemini can access
5. Toggle off any apps you don't want the AI reading

You can also use "temporary chat" mode when you want to ask Gemini something without it accessing your personal data. This keeps the conversation private and prevents data access entirely.

Your Inbox Is Already Under Surveillance

Personal Intelligence is just the latest layer of inbox surveillance. Before Google's AI ever reads your email, senders are already tracking you with spy pixels—invisible 1x1 images that report back when you open a message, what device you're using, your location, and how many times you've read it.

These tracking pixels are embedded in roughly 70% of marketing emails. Unlike Personal Intelligence, you don't get to opt out. The tracking happens automatically the moment you open an email.

Gblock stops these trackers before they can report back to senders. While you can't control what data Google already has, you can stop new surveillance from entering your inbox every day.

The Bottom Line

Google's Personal Intelligence feature represents a significant shift in how AI interacts with your personal data. While the company's privacy controls are better than nothing, the fundamental question remains: do you want an AI analyzing your emails, photos, and search history—even if it's "helpful"?

For now, the feature is limited to paying subscribers who actively enable it. But if history is any guide, today's premium feature becomes tomorrow's default setting. The time to think about your inbox privacy is before you need to opt out—not after.