Google Gemini is reading Drive documents without users’ permission. This claims Kevin Bankston, senior advisor for AI governance at CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology).
This article was updated with a response from Google on July 16.
Bankston claims on X that Gemini accessed a Google Docs as soon as he opened the document. He was shocked by this as Google’s AI function never explicitly obtained permission to view these documents.
Possible error from internal servers
Further inspection revealed that Bankston’s account was set up, so the AI assistant could not create Gmail, Drive, and Docs summaries. It was determined, however, that the problem manifests itself with the larger Google Drive offering and not exclusively with Docs. Therefore, he said, it looks like Google’s internal systems are not properly sealing content for internal use.
Google did not investigate the matter at the server level; therefore, it can only be speculated. Bankston also mentioned that he could not say for sure whether this error occurred with all users. He mentions that it could also be a problem that occurs specifically with Google Workspace Labs users. This group of users is more likely to get access to new features to test things and discover problems. It is possible that Google may overwrite the default settings for Gemini AI within this test group.
Answer Google
A Google spokesperson responded to the rumors in a reaction sent to our editorial team. “Our generative AI features are designed to give users choice and keep them in control of their data. Using Gemini in Google Workspace requires a user to proactively enable it, and when they do their content is used in a privacy-preserving manner to generate useful responses to their prompts, but is not otherwise stored without permission.”
The company emphasizes in the response that user data from Workspace is never used to train AI models. It is claimed that this is one of the several inaccuracies mentioned in Bankston’s post. In addition, it says it seems to be the case that the complainant appears to have used the function in the past and that it is always possible to stop doing so by closing the side panel.