By Jason Nelson
Publication Date: 2025-11-21 00:45:00
A toggle buried inside Gmail set off a public firestorm this week after users realized it allowed Google’s Gemini AI to analyze their emails and calendars by default.
Posts across social media showed confusion about when the feature had been enabled and how much personal information it had touched.
The uproar intensified as people complained that Google had given no notice that the feature had been activated. Many users said they had never agreed to anything resembling AI training and were surprised to learn their inboxes and scheduling data supported Gemini unless they turned the setting off themselves.
“You have been automatically opted in to allow Gmail to access all your private messages & attachments to train AI models,” electronics design engineer and content creator Dave Jones wrote on X. You have to manually turn off Smart Features in the settings menu in two locations.”
What Google said
Google said the setting came from its updated Smart Features system across Gmail,…
