Google warns against sharing personal information in the user guide for its Gemini chatbot. The content of your conversations does not stay between you and Gemini.

A week ago, Google proudly announced that its chatbot Bard would now be called Gemini. With the move to Gemini, Bard’s capabilities expand significantly, including the ability to create images using the Imagen model. Anyone who uses Gemini should first read the small print, because Google says in black and white in its data protection declaration that it will not pass on any personal data to the chatbot.

Gemini have no secrets

“Google collects your Gemini Apps conversations, related product usage information, location information, and your feedback. “Google uses this information to provide, improve and develop our machine learning products, services and technologies in accordance with our Privacy Policy,” Search Engine Journal says in its Gemini user guide.

Not only do Google’s machine learning models read your conversations with Gemini, the company’s human employees also have access to the content. Your conversations can be tracked and reviewed by human employees for up to three years, again to improve the AI ​​models. Gemini history is separately linked to your Google Account, so deleting the app activity in your account settings will make no difference. “Don’t enter anything that you wouldn’t want a human reviewer to see or be used by Google,” reads Google’s own recommendation.

As a user, you can choose not to save your history. But even in this case, the data can remain on Google’s servers for up to 72 hours. External people only have access to your data if you have expressly stated this in the settings.

AI and privacy: a difficult marriage

This shows once again that the use of generative AI is not unconditional. LLMs need data to learn, and the best data is collected while interacting with users. Gemini competitor ChatGPT has also been discredited several times because of its handling of personal data. Still, OpenAI expands the chatbot’s memory to store even more personal information about you.