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Gemini can't be disabled on Google Docs
- cynicalsecurity 2y agoGoogle is not a privacy company. Don't use their services if you are looking for privacy.
- aniviacat 2y agoThe title does not match what is said in the post. The post implies there is indeed a setting to turn it off.
- baud147258 2y agoexcept the setting doesn't seem to work cf https://x.com/KevinBankston/status/1811194932931027298 https://x.com/KevinBankston/status/1811194932931027298
- whoitwas 2y agoIs there a setting or not? Should we migrate from docs? Is it time to finally cut the cord officially de-Googlify?
- viraptor 2y agoA best time to get off Google was before the previous problems. The second best is now. (applies after every Google issue)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- michaelmior 2y agoDoes it matter that much if there is a setting or not? Google already has your documents anyway. They're not being used for training either way.
- yawpitch 2y agoPossession of a file doesn’t imply that Google was reading that file, and absent a very limited set of criminal actions for which a search warrant might be issued there’s always been a reasonable expectation that Google was not reading your files… now Google is reading that file, apparently by default.
- fauigerzigerk 2y agoNot sure what you mean by "reading". Google has always been indexing all personal content to power the search feature (not public Google search). It's a major reason why I use their services.
- yawpitch 2y agoLet’s take “reading” to mean “learning the semantic meaning of” then… an index is really just a data structure populated with the words and link back to the document, but no developed notion of the semantic meaning of those words or a semantic meaning like “odds this is the user’s SSN” associated with the content of the document, and it could easily be held entirely within your user account, entirely accessible only to you. This is much closer to a Google employee opening your document and reading it and emailing you back a summary as a default action, even if I’ll admit that employee is not generally intelligent. If the technical details make it so the “semantic index” is held only within your user account and only ever accessible by you and cannot under any circumstances leak outside to Google at large, then okay I might be comfortable with that, but I’d want to know those details first rather than just having this “feature” enabled on a file type.
- barnabee 2y agoIt matters to me. I don’t use Google to create personal documents precisely because I can’t trust or verify that their apps aren’t doing more than provide storage, versioning, conflict resolution, and an editing UI without my permission. That said, I think it’s way past time to give up on hoping to trust a cloud / “big tech” provider. There are now only three models for applications I’m happy to use, and I try to do everything in one of those three where possible: 1) Verifiably end-to-end encrypted. This is the only option way I can get comfortable with cloud software. 2) Self hosted applications. 3) Local first applications with “dumb filestore” data syncing via a provider of my choice (likely self hosted). In all cases I have a strong preference for truly open source (avoiding VC funded open core weirdness etc.) and try to donate more than the equivalent subscription or purchase price for proprietary alternatives to the projects I find that meet my needs.
- Sayrus 2y agoTitle is sensationalized. According to the thread, Gemini is enabled only after opening Gemini. Ingestion is enabled until Gemini is closed. > OK, more testing and I think I've figured it out (and it's still bad!). It seems that if you've ever clicked the Gemini button for a type of document then it remains open whenever you open another of that type--and therefore automatically ingests and summarizes it. So, e.g...
- rezonant 2y agoWhat is the problem here? Google already has your document, all they are doing with Gemini is running it through a bunch of transformers and spitting back some information. The act of sending input into an LLM does not itself train the LLM on that data (these systems don't "learn" via execution of normal input/output). Is the concern that Google would consider your use of Gemini on this document as consent to use it for future training?
- zarzavat 2y agoUnless explicitly promised otherwise, the assumption is always that anything being passed to a LLM API may be retained for various reasons. That’s the expectation that’s been set by the industry.
- delusional 2y agoI would presume that google has already trained Gemini on all the documents.
- fauigerzigerk 2y agoAgreed, but as I understand it they do make that promise: "We do not use your Workspace data to train or improve the underlying generative AI and large language models that power Gemini, Search, and other systems outside of Workspace without permission." https://support.google.com/docs/answer/14615114?hl=en https://support.google.com/docs/answer/14615114?hl=en Edit: I believe that this "without permission" caveat refers to experimental things like Workspace Labs where you have to give them that permission if you decide to join.
- dotancohen 2y agoWhere can I see the value of the "user has granted permission" boolean relevant to my account, clearly and unambiguously? I want to be sure that I haven't accidentally given permission via an action that I may have not understood.
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- wcoenen 2y agoThis just weird Twitter rage. The user seems to think the private information in their tax return will leak, just because Gemini tried to summarize it. To back this up, they reference the story about Gemini chats "leaking" on the public internet. What actually happened there was that people were creating publicly viewable chats via gemini.google.com/share/ links, and some of those got posted on social media and were indexed.
- nitinreddy88 2y agoIts not the matter of getting leaked. Without my consent, reading my documents to do something should be illegal
- wcoenen 2y agoGemini is "reading" your documents in the same sense that google servers are "reading" your documents in order to show them in your browser. Gemini is not a person and won't remember what it has "read". If you don't want google to handle your documents, then don't put your documents in Google docs.
- manuelmoreale 2y agoI get what you’re saying. But at a fundamental level there’s a difference between “using” content to do the thing I’m asking you to do (display it in a browser) and running it through an AI to do processing on that content. I personally think the two situations are quite different. I agree that if you don’t want Google to sniff on your content you shouldn’t put it on their servers to begin with. That said, stating that Gemini won’t remember, is dubious. Because given the track record of these companies I have my doubts that they don’t log everything they can put their hands on.
- _flux 2y ago> But at a fundamental level there’s a difference between “using” content to do the thing I’m asking you to do (display it in a browser) and running it through an AI to do processing on that content. The thing you're asking it to do is to maintain the state of the document in a service. This way it's able to display the state of the document to one or more clients. Arguably running through AI is even a more privacy-preserving feature, because Google Docs most certainly stores the data to a persistent storage (it is its main feature and cannot work without it), whereas AIs just needs to run the data in RAM.
- hiddencost 2y agoTry some empathy? A user is upset and scared. AI is scary and hard to understand. We owe our users a sense of safety and trust.
- robertlagrant 2y agoIt's not clear who you're replying to, but this isn't a conversation with a person. What's being discussed - away from the person who published this - are the truth claims in the post.
- BSDobelix 2y ago>Try some empathy? NO! Don't put your private documents on someone else's computer, that's easy. But if you do, don't put it on the hard drive of a company that makes money from your personal data for advertising, it sounds almost childish to explain.
- fragmede 2y agoIt’s disabled on $JOB and my personal Google Workplace. Author opted into some bard thing and then forgot about it.
- hexage1814 2y agoDon't use Google if you don't want Google to know what you are doing.
- Gant1 2y ago"Gemini is your always-on AI assistant across Google Workspace" So user buys a product without even reading the product page, then complains about product? m'kay
- egorfine 2y agoRationally I understand that no training is happening and this is no different than slicing a substring for preview purposes. Emotionally it makes my blood boil though. I am absolutely with the author. I had to leave Sentry for crash reports because they did report things to me I have never asked them to watch for in the first place. Same vibe.
- kkfx 2y agoHem... How "private" can be something existing on someone else computer, not just as mere data, but also the code to use and visualize them?
- 31337Logic 2y agoI never use Google docs. This is a great reminder of why I have no reason to start. Thanks.