Google Gemini was caught reading confidential documents in Drive, but it is not clear whether you gave permission for this or not.

AI professor Kevin Bankster discovered that Google Gemini had cheated on his personal Drive folder. The AI ​​assistant immediately created a summary of his tax return. As of September 2023, you can give Gemini access to your Drive and other Google applications for a more personal touch. This should only happen if you have given your explicit consent to do so.

Bankster couldn’t remember giving Gemini access to his tax returns, so he dug into his account settings. After much longer searching than necessary, he discovered that AI summaries for Gmail, Drive, and Docs were actually disabled on his account.

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According to the professor, this case is more of a curiosity in Google Drive that will not necessarily affect all Gemini users. The error can occur after the Gemini button has been pressed in at least one document.

The matching document type (in this case, PDF) will then automatically enable Google Gemini for all future files of the same type opened in Google Drive. Whether it’s a curiosity or not, you may prefer not to share the contents of your tax return with Google.

Google can overlook such negative publicity like a toothache. The company is pursuing an unrestrained AI push and does not have the best reputation when it comes to data protection. In Europe, such blunders could soon cost Google a lot of money. The AI ​​law comes into force on August 1. As a general-purpose AI technology, Gemini is subject to stricter regulations.