One of the biggest advantages of Google’s AI is what it already knows about you

One of the company’s biggest opportunities in AI lies in its ability to better recognize the user and personalize their responses, a Google Search executive said.

The promise is that AI will be uniquely useful because it knows you. But the danger lies in artificial intelligence that looks more like a surveillance than a service.

Recently episode From the Limitless podcast, Robbie Stein, VP of Google Search Product, explained that Google’s AI tends to field more queries that seek advice or ones where the user is looking for recommendations — and those types of questions are likely to benefit from more subjective responses.

“We think there’s a huge opportunity for our AI to get to know you better and then provide help uniquely because of that knowledge,” Stein said in the interview. “And one of the things we talked about at (Google Developers Conference) I/O is how AI can better understand you through connected services like Gmail.”

Google has been integrating AI into its apps for some time, starting when twin It was still known as cold. Recently, that I started pulling personal data On to another AI product, Gemini Deep Research. Gemini is now integrated into Google Workspace applications such as Gmail, calendar And driving.

But as Google integrates more Personal data In its artificial intelligence – which includes emails, documents and photos, Site historyBrowsing behavior – The line between a useful assistant and an intrusive assistant is becoming increasingly blurred. And unlike subscription services, avoiding Google’s data collection may become more difficult as AI becomes a key component of its products.

Google’s idea is that this deep personalization makes AI much more useful. The idea is that Google’s AI technology can learn from user interactions across various Google services, and then use that understanding to make more personalized recommendations. For example, if it knows that a user likes certain products or brands, the AI ​​responses may favor those in its recommendations.

Stein said that would be “more useful” than simply showing users a more general list of the best-selling products in a given category. “I think that’s very much the vision — to build something that can be useful specifically for you.”

This idea isn’t too different from the idea of ​​the “others” in the hit Apple TV show For many It captured global knowledge, including intimate details about individuals. When the system interacts with the show’s heroine, Carol, it uses that data to personalize everything: cooking her favorite meals, adopting a familiar face to handle its communications with her, and otherwise anticipating her needs.

But Carol doesn’t get the kind of personal responses; You find it invasive. She never agreed to share her data with the human mind, yet he knows her better than she seems.

Likewise, avoiding Google’s data-gobbling tactics looks set to become more difficult in the age of AI, and if Google can’t strike the right balance, the results may seem more scary than helpful.

(For clarification: Google He does It lets you control which apps Gemini uses to make its AI more familiar with you specifically – and it’s found under Gemini’s ‘Connected Apps’ Settings.)

If you share app data with Gemini, Google He says This data will be stored and used in accordance with Gemini Privacy Policy. This policy reminds users that human reviewers may read some of their data and not to “enter confidential information that you do not want the reviewer to see or that Google uses to improve its services.”

But as more data is absorbed into Google’s mind, it’s easy to see how AI could make data privacy more of a gray area.

However, Google believes it has a solution of sorts.

Stein says Google will indicate when its AI responses are personalized.

“I think people want to intuitively understand when they are personalized — when information is made for them, versus when (it is) something that everyone will see if they ask that question,” he said.

Stein also noted that Google could send users a push notification when a product they were considering after several days of online searching becomes available or is on sale.

“There are all these ways that Google now offers, across situations, across different aspects of your life, to be incredibly useful to you…,” he said. “And I think this has more to do with how I think about the future of search than any one specific feature or form factor.”