Google Can Now Use Your Gmail and Photos to Shape Ads. Here’s the Catch, and How to Opt Out

For five years, Google’s privacy policy carried a simple promise: no personalized ads based on what’s in your Gmail, Google Drive or Google Photos. As of October 16, that sentence has an asterisk.

Google revised the policy so that content from those three services can now shape the ads you see, as long as you’ve chosen to make that data available to other Google services that support personalized ads. In practice, that means Personal Intelligence, the opt-in feature that lets Gemini, AI Mode in Search and other Google tools dig through your inbox, photo library and files to give more tailored answers. Android Authority and The Verge first spotted the change this week, and it has since spread across the tech press.

Nobody’s email is suddenly being scanned by default. But the line between “helpful AI assistant” and “ad-targeting engine” just got a lot thinner, and if you’ve switched on Personal Intelligence on your Android phone, you should know exactly what you signed up for.

What Google actually changed

The edit is small in word count and big in meaning. Here’s how the key line reads before and after, based on the archived policy versions compared by PPC Land:

Google also added a line specific to Search: “Search may process some of the data that you allow Search to access to personalize content, including ads.” And the general description of how ads get chosen now cites “interests, activity, or personalized content from Google services,” where it used to mention only activity across Google services. Personalized content is now its own basis for ads.

The Search umbrella here is wide. It covers Search itself (including AI Mode and Discover), Google Maps (including Ask Maps) and Shopping.

Google’s position: indirect, not direct

Google’s framing rests on a distinction that will matter more to lawyers than to most people. Its Search help page says: “Ads will not be based directly on your Gmail inbox or your Google Photos library.” The same page then says that information “may be used to show you ads, so they are even more helpful for you.”

Read together, the message is that Google won’t pipe your raw inbox into the ad system, but what Search learns from it on your behalf can inform what gets sold against your searches. Google says advertisers won’t get access to your Gmail or Photos, and its long-standing rule against handing advertisers personally identifying details like your name or email address without permission hasn’t changed.

The timing is hard to ignore. Google confirmed it had begun testing ads for Personal Intelligence users in AI Mode around the same October 16 date, according to PPC Land, after saying in March that those users saw no ads. In January, Google VP Dan Taylor said there were no ads in the Gemini app and no current plans to add them. The new language is mostly about Search, not the Gemini app, but the direction of travel is clear.

Who this affects

Only people who have turned on Personal Intelligence and connected apps to it. Google launched the feature in beta on January 14 for U.S. Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers, initially drawing on Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and Search history. At I/O in May, Google announced plans to expand it to nearly 200 countries. It requires a personal Google Account and users 18 or older, and Google Search chief Nick Fox has described it as opt-in.

That opt-in status is the whole ballgame. If you never connected Gmail or Photos, nothing changes for you today. If you did, maybe months ago because the AI answers were genuinely useful, the terms of that deal shifted on October 16 without a fresh prompt asking you again.

Why this one stings

Gmail and ads have history. In 2017, Google said it would stop personalizing Gmail ads by scanning the words in your messages, a move widely read as a response to business customers who were uneasy about their correspondence being mined. The 2021 policy line made that promise explicit and extended it to Drive and Photos.

Here’s my view. An opt-in exception is far better than a default change, and Google deserves some credit for not flipping everyone on at once. But an AI assistant earns access to your inbox by promising to work for you. Turning that access into an ad signal, even an indirect one, muddies who the assistant is working for. Google should have asked again, clearly, instead of editing a policy page and letting reporters find it.

How to check or turn it off

If you want to keep using Gemini but stop Search from drawing on your mail and photos, Android Authority lays out the path. It works from the Google app or any browser:

1. Open your Google Account and go to Data & privacy.
2. Under Personalization & activity, choose Personalization settings.
3. Select Manage Personalized Recommendations in Search Services.
4. Find Connected Content apps under Additional Personal Intelligence.
5. Disconnect Google Workspace and Google Photos.

To go further, use the Turn off button on that same page to disable Personalized Recommendations in Search entirely. One caveat: disconnecting doesn’t necessarily delete data already saved in your Search Services History, so review and clear that too if you want a clean slate.

Whatever you decide, decide on purpose. With Personal Intelligence, the default is only as private as the last box you ticked.

Sources: Android Authority, 9to5Google, PPC Land. Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash.