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Link for the lazy: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/general Find "Smart Features", uncheck, and press save, which will reload Gmail. Then find "Google Workspace smart features" and click the "Manage Workspace smart features settings" button and unselect everything.
From the dialogues in the pictures it doesn’t sound like they are using anyones emails for training. The messaging indicates it’s more like using as context and/or generating embeddings for RAG. Unless there’s something else I’m not aware of. I know that Google does a lot of bad stuff but we don’t need to make up stuff they just aren’t doing This doomsday messaging an alarmism is only serves to degrade the whole caus…
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Yep I went through this sad journey with my gmail this week. Got tired of seeing "coming soon" packages cluttering up my inbox, so I looked into how to turn them off. It turned off the categories. Reminds me of the dark pattern used by many apps, where if you turn off notifications to avoid ads/spam, you also lose useful notifications.
There's an entire setting for "Turn on package tracking" alone. You do not need to disable Smart Features altogether.
My guess is that Smart Features will (along with everything else it does) scan your emails to populate "Happening Soon" with package status, and if you then enable "Turn on package tracking", it will also periodically poll the shippers for those packages to keep the status up to date.
My complaint still stands. I want to entirely remove "Happening Soon" without disabling categories. It's not even the "Google reading your emails" creepiness. I just don't want my UI to be cluttered.
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There's an entire setting for "Turn on package tracking" alone. You do not need to disable Smart Features altogether.
I never enabled that and I verified it's not enabled. However I still have the "Happening Soon" section in my inbox that has status of some packages. My guess is that Smart Features will (along with everything else it does) scan your emails to populate "Happening Soon" with package status, and if you then enable "Turn on package tracking", it will also periodically poll the shippers for those packages to keep the sta…
They're claiming that these options allow Google to use your data to train its AI, but that's not what it says at all. Where are they getting that idea from?
"training on our data" has turned into a catchphrase like "taking our guns" or "banning our books" - dumb propaganda for anti-AI crowd to enrage people. Whether personalized AI-based experience is useful can be debated but everything has to be twisted into culture wars, thats just how media is nowadays
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What did you move too? I was thinking of moving my personal email off of Gmail for a while. It's just 15+ years of accounts to untangle. I long made a "spam/unimportant site verification " account, so that's set.
My own domain.
Oh Well, I left gmail years ago, now it is used for junk mail, good luck loading ads going to gmail into your AI :)
What did you move too? I was thinking of moving my personal email off of Gmail for a while. It's just 15+ years of accounts to untangle. I long made a "spam/unimportant site verification " account, so that's set.
Proton is another one people often suggest. Hey.com sometimes too. No experience with those myself.
There are other options (such as the big guys, iCloud mail or Outlook.com), but aside from self-hosting (which I don't want to spend time maintaining just for my personal mail), I personally haven't seen much outside of those ones that are recommended often.
From the dialogues in the pictures it doesn’t sound like they are using anyones emails for training. The messaging indicates it’s more like using as context and/or generating embeddings for RAG. Unless there’s something else I’m not aware of. I know that Google does a lot of bad stuff but we don’t need to make up stuff they just aren’t doing This doomsday messaging an alarmism is only serves to degrade the whole caus…
> I know that Google does a lot of bad stuff but we don’t need to make up stuff they just aren’t doing
No no. a) they ARE doing a lot of bad stuff and b) that shit ain't made up and they ARE exactly doing that. Or do you also think that Github is NOT using priI know that Google does a lot of bad stuff but we don’t need to make up stuff they just aren’t doingvate repos to train Copilot? Do you honestly and truly believe that?
If you do truly believe that I got a bunch of bridges to sell to you.
Google can read the emails of everyone who corresponds with a Gmail user - which is almost everyone - and they can't opt out.
The article is useful overall, but the following line is such bad journalism that I want to call it out, since we can't afford to have people dumbed-down. > The reason behind this is Google’s push to power new Gmail features with its Gemini AI, helping you write emails faster and manage your inbox more efficiently.