Google’s long-standing promise that it won’t use your Gmail, Drive, or Photos to target ads is now a conditional promise—and the condition is whether you’ve connected those apps to its AI features.
The company quietly updated its privacy policy on October 16, changing a sentence that once flatly said it doesn’t show personalized ads based on your content from those services. The new language adds a crucial caveat: “unless you choose to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads”.
That exception is tied directly to Personal Intelligence, Google’s opt-in feature that lets tools like Gemini and AI Mode in Search pull context from your emails, files, and photos to give more tailored answers. Under the revised policy, that same connected data can now also inform the ads you see in AI-powered search results.
Google insists the change isn’t as alarming as it sounds. The company says advertisers never get access to the contents of your inbox or photo library, and ads aren’t “based directly” on your Gmail or Photos. Sensitive categories like health, race, or religion still can’t be used to tailor ads. But privacy advocates point out the distinction is mostly semantic: if an AI search response draws on your personal data, and ads are shown alongside that response, your data is effectively part of the targeting equation.
The practical takeaway is that Personal Intelligence remains opt-in—for now. If you want to keep your inbox and photo library out of the ad equation, you can disconnect those apps from Search’s connected services or turn off personalized recommendations entirely in your Google Account’s Data & privacy settings. It’s a small setting change, but it’s the difference between a clear privacy boundary and one that now comes with an asterisk.
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