Remember the “more personal Siri” ad that Apple pulled? Yeah, the same one where you could just say “which person I met at XYZ cafe two weeks ago” and it answered. And pulled a whole bunch of other futuristic tricks because it was armed with deep knowledge of your “iPhone life,” digging everywhere from your mail and messages to location and photos. Well, those plans still haven’t materialized.
But if you’ve been waiting for a similar convenience on Google’s side of the ecosystem, the future has just arrived. Today, Google has announced Personal Intelligence. Think of it as a more intimate version of Gemini.
The big shift
This avatar of the AI assistant knows what’s in your inbox. And Calendar. And Search history. And YouTube watching records. Essentially, all the core Google products that define your digital life. To what end? Well, it just knows these things — if you allow it. And once you’ve given it permission, Gemini’s answers will be personalized for you.
Let’s say there are a few purchase receipts for black Gas jeans in your inbox. The next time you ask Gemini to make a list of clothes you should prepare for your next vacation, the answer will include black Gas jeans. Or similar recommendations. If you ask it to plan an itinerary, it will take a peek at your Photos, and specifically the bajillion cake pictures stored in your Gallery.
Therefore, the itinerary it plans will include eateries where you can find and indulge in a variety of cakes, instead of steak and other delicacies. In a nutshell, you are giving Gemini access to your life with Google products to get answers that fit your mood, preferences, and history instead of a generic answer.
What does this mean for you?
If you look at it the other way around, Personal Intelligence in Gemini is simply a way of writing (or speaking) smaller prompts. Instead of saying something like “list ingredients for a charcuterie board but exclude pine nuts and blue cheese,” because you are allergic to the last two, you can simply ask for ingredients for a charcuterie board.
Gemini will automatically exclude those two items, based on your past conversations with the chatbot or health records save in any of the connected Google products. Connected is the key here. Google says you can choose to connect only the services you want to reference information from.
These connections are switched off by default, and you have to enable Personal Intelligence for each Google service individually. Google says it had to develop a new system called “context packing” so that Gemini can dig deep into its own knowledge base, the internet, and your personal information to give personalized answers.
“It delivers a tailored set of personal recommendations close to your upcoming accommodations by making sense of your data like your photos and emails, as well as things like your past Gemini app chat conversations, Search queries and YouTube history,” says the company.
The idea behind Personal Intelligence is to save the callout in your interactions. So far, if you wanted Gemini to look at your calendar, you had to manually type “@calendar” in the text command. But if you enable the Calendar connection for Personal Intelligence, Gemini will automatically glean information to provide an answer.
Now, you must be wondering that with such deep access, Google will have a free hand at accessing and using your personal data, more so than ever. Well, the company promises that it isn’t the case.
“Built with privacy in mind, Gemini Apps don’t train directly on your Gmail inbox or Google Photos library. To improve functionality over time, we train on info like prompts and responses in Gemini as well as summaries, excerpts, and inferences used to help answer your prompts,” says Google.
