The inability to disable this feature adds to the frustration
Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
21–30 of 163 posts
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#22The headline is a little unclear on the issue here. It is not surprising that Gemini will summarize a document if you ask it to. "Scanning" is doing heavy lifting here; The headline implies Google is training Gemini on private documents, when the real issue is Gemini was run with a private document as input to do a summary when the user thought they had explicitly switched that off. That having been said, it's a mean…
> It is not surprising that Gemini will summarize a document if you ask it to.
No, but it is surprising that Gemini will summarize every single PDF you have on your Drive if you ask it to summarize a single PDF one time.
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#23All AI should be opt-in, which includes both training and scanning. You should have to check a box that says "I would like to use AI features", and the accompanying text should be crystal clear what that means. This should be mandatory, enforced, and come with strict fines for companies that do not comply.
We also need a robots.txt extension for publicly accessable file exclusion from AI training datasets. iirc there's a nascent ai.txt but not sure if anyone follows it (yet)
I think the closest thing is the NoAI and NoImageAI meta tags, which have some relatively prominent adoption.
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#24The headline is a little unclear on the issue here. It is not surprising that Gemini will summarize a document if you ask it to. "Scanning" is doing heavy lifting here; The headline implies Google is training Gemini on private documents, when the real issue is Gemini was run with a private document as input to do a summary when the user thought they had explicitly switched that off. That having been said, it's a mean…
> It is not surprising that Gemini will summarize a document if you ask it to. No, but it is surprising that Gemini will summarize every single PDF you have on your Drive if you ask it to summarize a single PDF one time.
[flagged]
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#25Just reiterates that you don't own your data hosted on cloud providers; this time there's a clear sign, but I can guarantee that google's systems read and aggregated data inside your private docs ages ago. This concern was first raised when Gmail started, 20 years ago now; at the time people reeled at the idea of "google reads your emails to give you ads", but at the same time the 1 GB inbox and fresh UI was a compel…
One time I booked something on Expedia, which resulted in an itinerary email to my Gmail account. Lo and behold, minutes later I got a native CTA on the Android home screen to set up some thing or another on Google’s trip product. I dropped Android since, but Gmail is proving harder to shake.
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but I can guarantee that google's systems read and aggregated data inside your private docs ages ago That is how search works, yes. But if you’re trying to imply that everyone’s private data was scraped and loaded into their LLM, then no, that’s obviously a conspiracy theory. It’s incredible to me that people think Google has convinced tens of thousands of engineers to quietly keep secret an epic conspiracy theory…
> It’s incredible to me that people think Google has convinced tens of thousands of engineers to quietly keep secret an epic conspiracy theory about abusing everyone’s private data. With NDA being all over the place, it does strike me as doable. NDAs should have a time limit. Additionally, no-one in their right mind will be a whistleblower nowadays.
isn't that it's supposed to work? we just need >0 people to blow a whistle if a whistle needs blowing. we don't need to rely on the people fearing for their jobs so long as >0 people are willing to sacrifice their careers/lives when there's some injustice so great it's worth dying for
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#27All AI should be opt-in, which includes both training and scanning. You should have to check a box that says "I would like to use AI features", and the accompanying text should be crystal clear what that means. This should be mandatory, enforced, and come with strict fines for companies that do not comply.
What is the privacy implication of AI training?
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#28Every single week I have to refuse enabling back up for my pictures on my Google pixel. I refuse it today, next week I open the app and the UI shows the back up option enabled with a button "continue using the app with back up".
Somebody took the time to talk down my comment about this being a strategy to give their AI more training data. I continue believing that if they have your data they will use it.
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#29All AI should be opt-in, which includes both training and scanning. You should have to check a box that says "I would like to use AI features", and the accompanying text should be crystal clear what that means. This should be mandatory, enforced, and come with strict fines for companies that do not comply.
What is the privacy implication of AI training?
I care much more about allowing my content to be used at all, despite any privacy concerns. I simply don't want one single AI model to train on my content.
Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission
#30All AI should be opt-in, which includes both training and scanning. You should have to check a box that says "I would like to use AI features", and the accompanying text should be crystal clear what that means. This should be mandatory, enforced, and come with strict fines for companies that do not comply.
What is the privacy implication of AI training?
Models can easily regurgitate back training data verbatim, so anything private can be in theory accessed by anyone without proper access to that file