It seems like every time you turn around, there’s a new AI-powered feature across Google’s apps, including Docs, Sheets, and even Gmail. Gmail is the latest version of Google Workspace that takes Gemini even further. Powered by AI, we now provide an overview of all the emails in your inbox. There’s a lot of debate about the privacy implications of having Gemini in your inbox, but the arrival of this feature only further highlights one of the biggest problems with Google’s rollout of Gemini across all its apps. That is, it doesn’t give users a way to control when and where the AI works.
Google currently offers several Gemini-powered features across a variety of apps. You can use AI to create tables and format information in Google Sheets or rewrite content in Google Docs. With AI Overview now deployed, you can have AI read your emails and tell you the most important information you need.
To me, using Gemini to easily create tables in Google Sheets makes more sense than having it read all your emails, but the way Google has set up how users manage these features is too simplistic. Instead of allowing users to turn on and off the features they want, they either subscribe to the full suite of AI features or don’t have them all.
All-or-nothing design is not suitable
Gemini’s various upgrades to Google’s Docs, Sheets, and other Workspace apps may be helpful in some cases. The company recently released AI-powered organization features for Google Drive. For example, I like this. However, not everyone always finds the same level of usefulness in all the AI features Google offers.
That said, the company’s ideas about how to manage its “smart” AI capabilities feel completely off base. This is because if you don’t want Gemini to read your emails, you’ll need to turn off all the smart features in Workspace. There’s no way to simply opt out of Gemini in Gmail and leave everything else on. Gemini has to accept being turned off to everything.
Now, I’m sure there’s a discussion here about how powerful Gemini Intelligence is and why I need access to all my data, but I can’t help but feel like Gemini is trying to take over everything on my device. However, for people like me who aren’t interested in giving Google more of my information and data than necessary, but still want to use some of Gemini’s features, the only option I have left is to accept that my data will be sent to Google machines if I want to use any of these useful features.
The solution may not be easy
I hope Google comes up with a more granular solution for controlling where Gemini is used within Workspace, but the fact that it remains an all-in or all-out toggle also makes sense. There will be many people who, for one reason or another, would like to disable it completely. Whether it’s privacy concerns or simply not being interested in AI capabilities. And with so many different features to keep track of, locking them all in a single toggle would be the simplest solution, especially given that Google may be looking to make widespread use of these features.
However, giving the user a little more control would be a better solution than what is currently offered. Generative AI can help in many ways. It makes it much easier to automate tasks in documents and spreadsheets, for example. But giving AI unfettered access to all your personal information in Gmail is not a cost you have to pay.
