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Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

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Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#41
post #5

The only reason I am still using gmail is due to choice paralysis. I do not know which email service to choose and pay for. I do not like Proton. Is Fastmail the way to go? There is also the German one posteo. Should I just use Apple's mail? I'm taking suggestions if you have anything to share.

If you want Swiss but without the fancy marketing claims of Proton, have a look at Infomaniak.

They are to me the most legit alternative to Google Workspace/Office 365, run on their own infra and they've been here forever.

Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#42
post #24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how much of newsletter marketing (and paid email marketing) is being propped up by the GMail categories just silently ingesting tons of stuff that people never read or see (but also never unsubscribe from) I don't know, gmail regularly tells me "you haven't opened an email from XYZ newsletter in a while, do you want to unsubscribe?", with a direct button to do so.

It does? I have never once seen this in my life.

There's a pretty long waiting period before it does this. I'm not sure what the time required is, but I think it's at least 3 months. And it only does this if you don't interact with the newsletter at all.

Just speculation, but it's possible if you also use a non-web/non-gmail-app client it might suppress these notifications.

Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#43
post #23

When you disable all of these features, eventually it turns off email categorisation. At first this was annoying to me because it’s obviously a very good feature. But the last few weeks have been quite revealing: I’ve been receiving and unsubscribing from tons of emails I had no idea I even received regularly, because categories buried them away. I wonder how much of newsletter marketing (and paid email marketing) is…

> I wonder how much of newsletter marketing (and paid email marketing) is being propped up by the GMail categories just silently ingesting tons of stuff that people never read or see (but also never unsubscribe from) I don't know, gmail regularly tells me "you haven't opened an email from XYZ newsletter in a while, do you want to unsubscribe?", with a direct button to do so.

I’ve never had this notification before. I get the direct unsubscribe button if I actually view the email, but not a warning I’m not reading them

Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#44
post #38

Interestingly, “we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model” (what they said) does not mean the same thing as “we don’t use your Gmail content to train AI” (what was asserted). Anyone using Gmail and expecting it to be private or not leveraged against them is a fool.

We use everyone’s email content to train a different model that Gemini is friends with!

Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#45
post #5

The only reason I am still using gmail is due to choice paralysis. I do not know which email service to choose and pay for. I do not like Proton. Is Fastmail the way to go? There is also the German one posteo. Should I just use Apple's mail? I'm taking suggestions if you have anything to share.

I'm on Migadu. They are quite cheap, offer a student discount, support multiple domains, offer a very neat snappy UI, and have an extremely responsive support.

Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#47

When you disable all of these features, eventually it turns off email categorisation. At first this was annoying to me because it’s obviously a very good feature. But the last few weeks have been quite revealing: I’ve been receiving and unsubscribing from tons of emails I had no idea I even received regularly, because categories buried them away. I wonder how much of newsletter marketing (and paid email marketing) is…

I found the categorization feature distracting anyway because I read all my emails and always had to click through several tabs to see them.

Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#48
post #4

Poor AI, reading all those ad emails...

I am wondering can we use LLMs to semantically encrypt our emails so that if I am talking about my startup strategy, to the person snooping or NSA it will appear as if we are talking about recipes.

Re: Google denies 'misleading' reports of Gmail using your emails to train AI

#49
Google is making both the comunications and the AI disable as arcane as might be legally defensible. They know what they are doing is wrong, so they are setting up their future legal argument for the inevitable class action lawsuit.
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