Gemini rolling out ‘Personal Intelligence’ beta that uses Gmail & your Google apps data

Google’s goal with Gemini is to make a “ personal, proactive, and powerful ” assistant. The Gemini app today is adding “Personal Intelligence” in beta. This lets Gemini use the data Google already has about you to “supercharge” and personalize responses. Personal Intelligence can retrieve specific details from text, photos, or videos in your Google apps to customize Gemini responses. This includes: Google Workspace : Including Gmail, Calendar, Drive, etc. Google Photos YouTube : Watch history Search services : Including Search, Shopping, News, Maps, Google Flights and Hotels Along with “reasoning across complex sources,” Gemini will “provide uniquely tailored answers.” This is a step beyond referencing past chats and something the company has been working towards since last year with the experimental “ Personalization ” model. Google provides this example of Personal Intelligence, with personalization leveraged when Gemini thinks it will be helpful to the response: “...we needed new tires for our 2019 Honda minivan two weeks ago. Standing in line at the shop, I realized I didn’t know the tire size. I asked Gemini. These days any chatbot can find these tire specs, but Gemini went further. It suggested different options: one for daily driving and another for all-weather conditions, referencing our family road trips to Oklahoma found in Google Photos. It then neatly pulled ratings and prices for each.” “As I got to the counter, I needed our license plate. Instead of searching for it or losing my spot in line to walk back to the parking lot, I asked Gemini. It pulled the seven-digit number from a picture in Photos and also helped me identify the van’s specific trim by searching Gmail.” Gemini will show its thinking process with an “Answer now” button that replaces the current “Skip.” The response will “reference or explain the information it used from your connected sources so you can verify it.” You can correct Gemini about your preferences at any time, as well as regenerate responses without personalization enabled. There’s also the ability to use temporary chats. On the privacy front, Personal Intelligence is off by default and you can choose specific apps to connect. Google explains how “Gemini doesn’t train directly on your Gmail inbox or Google Photos library.” Rather, it trains on “limited info, like specific prompts in Gemini and the model’s responses” to improve the capability. In the minivan example, “photos of [the] road trip, the license plate picture in Photos and the emails in Gmail are not used to train the model.” They are only referenced to deliver the reply. We train the model with things like my specific prompts and responses, only after taking steps to filter or obfuscate personal data from the conversation I have with Gemini. In short, we don’t train our systems to learn your license plate number; we train them to understand that when you ask for one, we can locate it. The company says a “key differentiator” is how this sensitive data “already lives at Google securely” so it doesn’t need...

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