Gmail reads your emails to train its AI, and you probably haven't turned it off

Gmail reads your emails to train its AI, and this is not just a technical detail

This is not just another harmless update. Over the past few days, several Gmail users have discovered that their settings were changed by default to let Google analyse the content of their emails and attachments in order to train its artificial intelligence models. Translation: your private correspondence becomes raw material for Gemini, the new in-house AI. And if you touch nothing, it is all switched on.

Officially, Google wants to improve Smart Compose or smart replies, those automatic suggestions that finish your sentences. Unofficially? It is a deep shift in what we still consider to be "our" data.

When the "privacy" box is ticked by default against you

The most troubling part here is not the use of AI. It is the method. Google switched these settings on without asking for your explicit consent. No intrusive pop-up. No acceptance window. Just a ticked box, buried deep in the settings, that you will only find if you go actively looking for it.

This is a dark pattern: a gentle manipulation that relies on user inertia. They are betting you will change nothing. And Google wins that bet 99% of the time.

An AI that learns from your secrets

Let us be clear: these models are trained on the content of your messages, your attached files, your writing habits. Even if Google promises anonymisation and secure processing, this remains direct access to what you consider private.

This raises three major problems:

1. Biased consent: you did not really agree. You were made to consent by default.
2. Functional opacity: it is impossible to know how your data is used, where it is stored, by whom it will be re-read, corrected, or exploited.
3. Snowball effect: if Google does it, others will follow. And tomorrow it will be your work messages, your legal documents, your medical conversations.

What this says about the future of our relationship with the digital world

This is not a technical question. It is a question of digital civilisation.

We live in an age where technology moves faster than the legislative, ethical or civic safeguards. When you use Gmail, you are not just a customer: you are a training vector for AIs that know you better than you know yourself.

We are promised productivity gains, more relevant assistants, a smoother digital life. In reality, we are being stripped of cognitive sovereignty over what we write, think and share.

How should we react? It is not just a matter of a setting

Most articles will tell you "how to turn off" this feature. That is useful. But not enough.

What we need is to raise the level of public debate around what must remain inalienable in a digital world.

• Your messages should never be analysed without your explicit, and informed, consent.
• An AI should not be able to be fed on private conversations without individual consent.
• The digital giants must take on duties of loyalty towards users they know to be passive, sometimes vulnerable, often poorly informed.

A digital culture to (re)build

This subject ties in with what I defend in my book Être en cybersécurité: you cannot protect what you do not understand.

Every time a platform pushes its users towards more simplicity at the expense of control, it chips away at their autonomy. And every time we give ground on these small details, a box ticked here, a vague authorisation there, we build a society of technological dependency.

Yet a healthy digital democracy rests on three pillars:

• Transparency in the rules of the game,
• Informed consent from users,
• The ability to refuse without functional penalty.

So, what should we do?

• Go into your Gmail settings and turn off the "Smart Features" and "Workspace Smart Features" functions (they are in two different places).
• Inform those around you, your colleagues, your clients. If you manage sensitive data for others, you have a responsibility.
• Ask the question to your digital providers: where does my data go, who reads it, what for?
• Campaign for strong European regulation on the use of personal data for AI training purposes. The GDPR was a first step. It is time to move to the next one.

This is not a battle against artificial intelligence. It is a battle for a human intelligence of the digital world.

Because a tool, however powerful it may be, should never decide for you what it does with your privacy.