There’s a new battle taking place on your computers and your phones that will shape how you use technology for years to come. Google is leading the charge—albeit it’s not alone, and Gmail will likely change more than any other platform. That means serious decisions for its 3 billion users, who are well advised to think before clicking “yes.”
We’re talking AI and the breakneck speed with which new tools are being stitched into the platforms and services we all use daily. Apple may have been hit with an unintended slowdown, but not Google and Microsoft. There’s no stopping them.
Take your Chrome search history as an example. It’s surprisingly personal — what you search on the web and how you term those searches. But AI will be let loose on that history, if you let it, using this to get to know you better so it can help you more. But this isn’t an executive assistant, it’s a technology platform owned by the world’s most valuable marketing machine. Buyer beware, as they say.
Or how about Microsoft’s new (and seemingly automated) opt-in to having its own Copilot AI let loose on OneDrive. “Do you want Microsoft Copilot sniffing your OneDrive files?” PC World asks. “Too late. Allowing AI to sniff your cloud files may seem a little creepy, but Microsoft says it will only work with your authorization.”
And so we come to Gmail, and Google’s confirmation on Thursday that “Gmail is rolling out a smarter search feature powered by AI to show you the most relevant results, faster.” No doubt this is useful. Factoring in how you engage with emails and senders to better serve up results, to resolve the pain in email search. “If you’ve ever struggled with finding information in your overflowing inbox,” Google says, “you’re not alone.”
But again this is AI set loose on your personal information. I asked Google about the privacy implications and was assured that “our priority is respecting our users’ privacy while giving them choice and control over their data. To that end, this particular tool is one of the ‘smart features’ that users can control in their personalization settings.” You can read more about those settings here.
There’s no suggestion that your data is being syphoned off to train models or enhance marketing profiles, but it is being analyzed. Users must now need to decide on their own red lines. For me, there’s a big difference between auditable on-device AI analysis versus what’s done in the cloud. I’ve argued before that Gmail and email more widely need to catch up with the on-device processing being applied to other platforms, and here’s another good reason why that’s becoming so critical.
This new tool is dubbed “most relevant” search and is rolling out across personal Google accounts. Google says “it can be accessed on the web and in the official Gmail app for Android and iOS.” You can toggle back and forth between legacy “recent” and AI “relevant” results. Business users will get this as well, but not for some time.
