Using Google products and services has always been fundamentally precarious: doing so gives the world’s largest advertising company a lot of juicy personal data. Google has long said it won’t use sensitive data from products like Gmail, Drive, and Photos to personalize ads, but a change to the company’s privacy policy appears to dismantle that firewall.
On October 16, Google published an update to its privacy policy, spotted by Android Authority. The ad personalization section used to include a clear data limit for certain apps. “We do not show you personalized ads based on your Drive, Gmail, or Photos content,” the document said. Now, Google has updated it with the following language.
Updated text about when your sensitive data might appear in ads.
Credit: Google
Updated text about when your sensitive data might appear in ads.
Credit: Google
This mistake opens the door to the use of data from apps like Gmail and Photos in ads when shared with other Google services, and it turns out that Google has a mechanism to do this, with Personal Intelligence. The company launched Personal Intelligence in early 2026, allowing users to transfer data from multiple applications to Google’s artificial intelligence products. The idea is that added context from existing data will lead to better AI responses, but it’s also proving to be a privacy minefield.
Personal Intelligence connects your data with the Gemini app, but also with features like AI overviews and AI mode search. While the Gemini app currently has no ads, you may see sponsored content in AI search tools. Google’s privacy policy changes appear to recognize that data shared with AI search through Personal Intelligence could therefore contribute to ad personalization.
According to Google, this clarification still does not mean that ads are “directly based” on your personal data. Here is the company’s full statement:
“Connecting your apps is a completely voluntary option. Ads will still be relevant to things like your query, the context of the response, and your interests. Ads won’t be based directly on your Gmail inbox or your photo library, and, as always, sensitive information won’t be used to personalize ads.”
Google’s statement is essentially a roundabout way of confirming that Workspace and Photos data can inform ads. If you interact with AI mode while Personal Intelligence is enabled, there’s a chance that summaries and insights from your data will inform the answers you get. Because that same data is used for ad targeting, it’s accurate to say that your personal data is an element of ad targeting in AI search. The privacy policy now makes this clear.
