I spent 10 mins trying to find a clear statement of whether Google uses information submitted to Gemini for training and I couldn't find one. It is hard not to come to the conclusion they actively try to obfuscate it because there are many statements that vaguely sound like they should address it but then don't properly do that.

So I would have to suggest, use these features with extreme caution on any page you consider private if you aren't prepared for your private information to get sucked into Google's Gemini training data.

It's right there in the privacy center. The answer is quite unambiguously yes by the way. (This is for the Gemini app):

"How your data is used Google uses this data, as described in our Privacy Policy, to:

Provide our services Maintain and improve our services Develop new services Personalise our services (learn more) Customise our services Communicate with you Measure performance Protect Google, our users and the public

These uses extend to the generative AI models and other machine-learning technologies powering our services."

We had legal trying to figure out if data submitted to Google Cloud was shared with Google, and the conclusion was that it is unclear from their TOS. Their TOS is a bunch of circular references to different agreements.

I think it goes without saying that anything Google provides for free, they do it to garner user data. Traditional search is dying. And so is the advertising that comes with it. They are finding alternatives. They'll keep "injecting" themselves into everything we use regularly. Ads will get even more targeted... much more contextual in realtime.

They are definitely capable of writing such statements, which you can see in their enterprise products. In my Google Workspace gemini app it says pretty prominently and clearly:

  Your [ORGNAME] chats aren’t used to improve our models

So they definitely understand that people want to hear that their data isn't being used for training, and they know how to say it clearly and reassuringly. Which makes the omission of that in their consumer products more telling in my view.

So, naive question: If you click this button while looking at your bank account or, say, a mortgage application form, or a government website where you're paying taxes, etc... is all your form input literally just sucked into some insecure dataset in the cloud used for training Gemini?

I think if Google trained current models on private data, confidential info would leak constantly, it would be an absolute trainwreck. If Gemini leaked your Gmail and Chrome activity, Google would get sued and regulated into oblivion.

But Google needs to leave this option open in the future, in case they have to go all-in on an arms-race against China, if Chinese AI starts becoming an actual threat somehow. And it's easy to predict the USA gov would prioritize that race over privacy concerns.

For what it's worth, these are the current conditions under which it will be active:

* Be 18 or over and in the US.

* Use a Mac or Windows computer.

* Use the latest version of Chrome.

* Have Chrome’s language set to English (United States).

* Sign(ed) in to Chrome.

This is literally the worst part of Gemini. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if, and if so what, they are training on even with my stupid $250/mo subscription. It's totally opaque.

being privacy centric is a badge of honor these days, so if they aren't making it clear or not giving an easy to find option, then it's a guaranteed to your queries and outputs are used for training.

Or course they are using it. With Google even this keyboard stroke on Android is used for something.

Google generally uses data from free users to train ML models etc., but no data from paying customers. I don't have a link to back it up though.

They do, even when you pay for gemini pro/ultra.

they obvuscate it with legal nonsense