Google has denied that it's training new AI by reading YOUR emails, but this Gmail rumour refuses to die

Gmail logo on phone

Despite recent rumours, Gmail is not reading your emails to train AI

| GETTY IMAGES
Taylor Bushey

By Taylor Bushey, 


Published: 08/12/2025

- 15:44
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AI is only used to power its Smart Features

  • Google has clarified that its AI is not reading emails in your Gmail inbox
  • Rumours swirled after a blog post was published saying AI would "draw on" in Gmail
  • Many believed Google's AI technology was reading their emails to train itself
  • Google issued a statement on X, iterating that this is false

Google is not reading your emails.

The Californian company was forced to clarify that Gemini isn't digesting everything in your inbox after a blog post from Google sparked confusion by suggesting that the AI-powered assistant will "draw on context from your Gmail, Drive and Chat".

But don't worry – it doesn't mean that Gemini will be able to answer questions based on the contents of your personal correspondence.

Gmail does scan your content, but it's only used to power its Smart Features. This allows AI to automatically help you write emails faster and organise your inbox. These features include spam filtering, categorisation, writing suggestions, and its latest scheduling assistant capabilities.

To help clear up any confusion, Google posted a statement on X claiming that no settings have been changed and that Gmail content is not being used to train their Gemini AI models.

Gmail Smart Features have also been available for several years, where the first feature released in 2016.

Woman sitting at desk with Gmail open

Gmail Smart Features have also been available for several years, where the first feature released in 2016.

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GOOGLE PRESS OFFICE

If you'd like to turn off Smart Features in Gmail, you can take the following steps:

  1. Open Gmail and log in
  2. Click the gear icon (⚙️) in the top right — go to See all settings
  3. Under the General tab, scroll down to the Smart features and personalisation section
  4. Uncheck the box labelled Turn on smart features in Gmail, Chat and Meet
  5. Scroll further to find Google Workspace smart features, then click Manage Workspace smart feature settings
  6. In the pop-up, toggle off: Smart features in Google Workspace and Smart features in other Google products
  7. Click Save Changes and reload Gmail.
It's important to note that turning off Google Smart Features means you’ll no longer get AI writing suggestions like Smart Compose or auto-suggest in Gmail and Docs. It also disables things like automated sorting, smart categorisation, and automatic event detection across Google services.
You’ll have less personalisation and a more manual, classic Google experience.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

gmail logo pictured at the top of the inboxGmail is one of the most popular email services on the planet, with over 1.8 billion account holders worldwide | GOOGLE PRESS OFFICE

This isn't the only AI-powered news Google has been discussing lately.

Google released Gemini 3 on November 18, 2025, which is an upgraded version of the AI-powered assistant.

Gemini is Google’s advanced AI model designed to understand and generate text, images, audio, and even code. Think of it as a powerful digital assistant that can answer questions, summarise information, help write documents, create visuals, or assist with complex problem-solving.

The latest upgrade is set to understand even more information, so it can process your requests with fewer errors.

Instead of Gemini training itself on your content, it's been designed to learn from massive datasets of text, code, images, audio, and video. This allows it to understand content from a range of different types of information, so it responds accurately to your inquiries.

Gemini is used not only in your Gmail, but also across Google Calendar, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Photos. This helps you find what you need without having to switch between several different apps.



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