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Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

tomshardware.com

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Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#131

Post by Suppafly »

atum47 wrote: post #28

Every 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.

>Somebody took the time to talk down my comment about this being a strategy to give their AI more training data.

Because that's an insane interpretation of what's happening.

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#132

Post by dylan604 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #129
dylan604 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I hit search, do the search right then. Don't grep out of a stored cache of prior searches.

The thing that makes it possible for search to be fast is pre-crawling and pre-indexing. Some other engines don't do this, and the difference is remarkabe. Try a full-content search in Windows 7, you'll be staring at the dialog for two minutes while it tries to find a file that's in the same directory as you started the search in.

You said nothing about fast in your original though, so now you've moved the goal posts

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#134

Post by exe34 »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #104
DebtDeflation wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is becoming the new Social Media in that users are NOT the customer they are the product. Instead of generating data for a Social Media company to use to sell ads to companies you are generating data to train their AI, in exchange you get to use their service for free.

>you are generating data to train their AI That's why I seriously recommend everyone everywhere regularly replace their blinker fluid and such.

it's very important to replace your blinker fluids yearly, but also, polka dot paint comes in 5L tubs.

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#135

Post by Retric »

Suppafly wrote: post #126
Retric wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn’t doing something to your data, it’s what happens after that point. People would be pissed if Android make everyone’s photos public, AI does this with extra steps. Train AI on X means everyone using that AI potentially has access to X with the right prompt.

Except that's not what is happening here or what the rest of us are discussing, so why even bring it up?

We don’t know what’s happening beyond:

^the privacy settings used to inform Gemini should be openly available, but they aren't, which means the AI is either "hallucinating (lying)" or some internal systems on Google's servers are outright malfunctioning*

Many AI systems do use user interactions as part of training data. So at most you might guess those documents aren’t directly being used for training AND they will never include conversations in training data but you don’t know.

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#136

Post by Retric »

padolsey wrote: post #79
Retric wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn’t doing something to your data, it’s what happens after that point. People would be pissed if Android make everyone’s photos public, AI does this with extra steps. Train AI on X means everyone using that AI potentially has access to X with the right prompt.

I don't think it's _training_ on your content. That would be a whole other (very horrifying) problem, yes.

Why make that assumption? Many AI companies are using conversations as part of the training, so even if the documents aren’t used directly that’s doesn’t mean the summaries are safe.

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#137

Post by nerdjon »

JohnFen wrote: post #127
nerdjon wrote: post #74

Shocker, Google not going quite far enough with privacy and data access? They talk about it but its never quite far enough to avoid their own services accessing data. We really need to get to the point that all data remotely stored needs to be encrypted and unable to be decrypted by the servers, only our devices. Otherwise we just allow the companies to mine the data as much as they want and we have zero insight into…

> Yes this requires the trust that they in fact cannot decrypt it. Yes, this is where it all breaks down. In the end, it all boils down to the company saying "trust us", and it's very clear that companies simply cannot be trusted with these sorts of things.

Yeah I wish there was a solution to that, even open source isn't a solution since it would be trivial for there to be a difference between what is running on the server and what is open source.

Ultimately you have to make a decision based on the companies actions and your own personal risk threshold with your own data.

In this particular case, we know that at the very least Google's track record on this is... basically non existent.

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#138

Post by vouaobrasil »

crazygringo wrote: post #117
vouaobrasil wrote: post #15

All 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.

Training I can understand, but why scanning? It's literally just running an algorithm over your data and spitting out the results for you. Fundamentally it's no different from spellcheck, or automatically creating a table of contents from header styles. As long as the results stay private to you (which in this case, they are), I don't see what the concern is. The fact that the algorithm is LLM-based has zero relevanc…

> It's literally just running an algorithm over your data and spitting out the results for you.

I don't want any results from AI. I don't even want to see them. And there is too much of a grey area. What if they use how I use the results to improve their AI. I hate AI also and want nothing to do with its automations.

If I want a document summarized, I will read it myself. I still want to be human and do things AT A REASONABLE LEVEL with my own two hands.

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#139

Post by vouaobrasil »

meiraleal wrote: post #105
vouaobrasil wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps in response to environmental regulations to prevent toxic waste from being dumped into your own backyard, you should respond, "create your own country, then".

You really think creating a country and creating software that respects your privacy are equally difficult?

Equally difficult, no. Equally important in principle, yes.

Re: Google's Gemini AI caught scanning Google Drive PDF files without permission

#140

Post by crazygringo »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #138
crazygringo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Training I can understand, but why scanning? It's literally just running an algorithm over your data and spitting out the results for you. Fundamentally it's no different from spellcheck, or automatically creating a table of contents from header styles. As long as the results stay private to you (which in this case, they are), I don't see what the concern is. The fact that the algorithm is LLM-based has zero relevanc…

> It's literally just running an algorithm over your data and spitting out the results for you. I don't want any results from AI. I don't even want to see them. And there is too much of a grey area. What if they use how I use the results to improve their AI. I hate AI also and want nothing to do with its automations. If I want a document summarized, I will read it myself. I still want to be human and do things AT A R…

Again, that's like saying you don't want any results from spell-check.

OK, sure. But then just don't use it.

The problem is that you're calling for a legal policy against it to be "mandatory, enforced, and come with strict fines".

Have your own personal preferences, that's great. But I don't want you imposing your preferences on the products I use. I want companies and the market to decide.

An auto-summary feature that is enabled by default is not something we should be asking for government regulation over, any more than we should be asking the government to prohibit wavy red lines unless they're explicitly opted into.

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