Has Google got its AIs on you?
A tech expert is urging Gmail users to switch off several features over concerns that Google could automatically access their sensitive email data and use it to train AI.
“IMPORTANT message for everyone using Gmail,” engineering YouTuber Davey Jones wrote in a viral X PSA on this alleged digital Trojan Horse. “You have been automatically OPTED IN to allow Gmail to access all your private messages & attachments to train AI models.”
The cybersecurity expert added, “You have to manually turn off Smart Features in the Settings menu in TWO locations.”
They highlighted these two locations in a screenshot.
The Post reached out to Google for comment.
Per the post, desktop and laptop users would have to click on the “See all settings” tab, go the “Smart features” setting, and unselect “Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet.”
Next, click “Manage Workplace smart feature settings,” after which you’ll be directed to a secondary pop-up that will allow you to check and uncheck features in Google Workspace and other Google products.
By deactivating these functions, Gmail users will switch off the “Ask Gemini” feature that provides a content summary, suggestions from Google Assistant and the Gemini App, and other features.
Changing these settings on Smartphones, meanwhile, requires users to pull up their settings page (located at the bottom of the inbox menu) and click on “data privacy,” the Huffpost reported. This will allow them to deactivate “Smart features” and go to the “Google Workspace smart features” to follow suit for Workspace and Google products.
The one caveat is that doing so will also disable a lot of useful tools as well. These include features like “smart compose,” the function that filters emails into “promotional” and “social” inboxes, and even bare necessities like spell-check, grammar check and autocorrect.
As a result, this can render people’s Gmail a disorganized, ransom note-esque mess.
“Oh, good. It also disables inbox categories,” griped one disillusioned user. “Wonderful. Why do they have to keep making things progressively s—tier.”
Others wondered why the aforementioned email categories were now only available with AI, when users had previously been able to access them without it. “How come email categories been working for over 5 years now without Gemini stuff and now when you disable gemini stuff email categories are gone????? How do you explain that huh?!?!?” One spluttered.
This comes on the heels of a November 25 lawsuit filed by Illinois resident Thomas Thele. In it, he claimed that on October 10, 2025, “Google secretly turned on Gemini for all its users’ Gmail, Chat, and Meet accounts, enabling AI to track its users’ private communications contained in those platforms without the users’ knowledge or consent.”
“As of the date of this filing, Google continues to track these private communications with Gemini by default, requiring users to affirmatively find this data privacy setting and shut it off, despite never ‘agreeing’ to such AI tracking in the first place,” they added.
A Google rep told the HuffPost via email that the reports are “misleading.”
“Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model,” they claimed, adding that they practice utmost transparency when updating their “service and policies.”
