Google's Gemini AI Reportedly Reading Google Drive Docs Without Permission

TapTechNews July 15th news, according to the report of X user @KevinBankston, Google's artificial intelligence service Gemini AI seems to be reading private documents in Google Drive without the user's explicit permission.

TapTechNews noted that Bankston detailed this problem in his tweet. Initially, he found that Gemini seemed to be reading his Google Drive documents, but the option to disable this function couldn't be found in the relevant settings. Upon further investigation, he discovered that this was a problem with Google Drive itself, not Google Docs, but both might have similar vulnerabilities.

Moreover, according to Gemini AI, the privacy settings used to control information sharing were supposed to be manageable by users, but Bankston couldn't find these settings at all. This either means that Gemini has a 'hallucination' (i.e., providing false information), or there is a problem with Google's internal servers. In either case, this raises doubts for users about data security, even though Google claims that it will not use the scanned data for training Gemini AI.

Bankston finally found the relevant setting options in a completely different location, but even after disabling the relevant function, Gemini would still automatically scan all the same type of documents (in this case PDF format) after he clicked on one document. Bankston speculates that this may be due to his enabling of the Google Workspace Labs function in 2023, which may override the established Gemini settings.

Even if the problem is limited to Google Workspace Labs users, it is still a rather serious negative impact for those users who help Google test its latest technologies. Especially when it comes to sensitive information, the user's right to informed consent is extremely important.