Google announced its latest update to its Gemini service called Personal Intelligence. With Personal Intelligence turned on, users can connect Gemini with existing Google apps such as Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube, and Search to receive personalized answers based on data that already exists across these services.
For example, if you want to recall the name of a restaurant you recently visited and photographed, which is saved in Google Photos, Gemini Personal Intelligence can understand the context and instantly retrieve the restaurant’s name. Personal Intelligence has two core strengths: reasoning across complex sources and retrieving specific details from, say, an email or photo to answer your question, says Google.
Since the personal intelligence feature works on existing personal data, there is a high chance that Google could misinterpret your preferences or generate responses based on the amount of data it has crawled. Gemini may also struggle with timing or nuance, particularly around relationship changes such as divorces or shifts in your interests, Google notes.
For instance, seeing hundreds of photos of you at a golf course might lead it to assume you love golf. However, it may miss the nuance: you don’t love golf—you love your son, and that’s why you’re there. If Gemini gets this wrong, you can simply tell it (for example, “I don’t like golf”).
How to enable the Personal Intelligence feature on Google Gemini?
For eligible users, the personal intelligence feature will be shown as pop-up information to enable when opening Gemini across Web, Android, and iOS apps. If you don’t see an invitation to try it on the home screen of Gemini, you can turn it on in Settings by following these instructions:
- Open Gemini and tap Settings
- Tap Personal Intelligence
- Select Connected Apps (Gmail, Photos, etc.)
On Privacy
On the privacy aspect of the feature, Google says it does not train its systems on users’ personal data. For example, it does not learn a license plate number from a picture of your car stored in Google Photos; instead, it trains its systems to understand that when you ask for such information, it can locate it.
Additionally, connecting apps is turned off by default. Users can choose whether to enable it, decide exactly which apps to connect, and turn it off at any time. Gemini will try to reference or explain the information it used from your connected sources so you can verify it.
Users also get the option to regenerate responses without personalization for a particular chat or use temporary chats to have a conversation without personalization.
Availability
Starting today, access is rolling out to limited groups over the next week for eligible Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. Google has assured that the feature will expand over time to more countries and eventually to the free tier. It is also coming to AI Mode in Search soon.