This week, Google shoved various capabilities from Gemini, its AI tool, into Workspaces for Business and Enterprise customers, including associated Gmail accounts. You might now see buttons for “Summarize this email,” which when clicked will provide a bullet point list of what the email (allegedly) says and, in email threads, peoples’ sentiment towards it in their replies. There’s also a button in the top right that brings up a Gemini prompt bar, and a couple of ways Gemini offers to help. “Show unread emails from today,” and “show unread emails from this week,” are two I’m looking at right now.
Many people are going to love this. Others are going to want to run away from it as quickly as possible. Many people—incluing us—are already furious that they were automatically opted into it. Turns out, disabling it isn’t straightforward, as I found out why I tried to opt 404 Media out of it.
“Today we announced that we’re including the best of Google AI in Workspace Business and Enterprise plans without the need to purchase an add-on,” Google wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
The “Summarize this email” button took me by surprise. I opened my Gmail iOS app and it was just there. When I asked a Google spokesperson if Google gave clients a heads up this was coming, they provided me with a couple of links (including that one above), both of which were published Wednesday. So, no not really.
I tried out the email summarize feature on a non-sensitive email Emanuel had just forwarded me. It was an obvious scam email, with someone pretending to be from the family of Bashar Al-Assad and who said they could make us a lot of money. Emanuel forwarded me the email and joked “sounds good.”
Gemini’s summary said “Mohammed Karzoon, a former member of the Syrian President al-Assad’s cabinet, reaches out to Emanuel Maiberg to discuss potential investment portfolios.” The second bullet point read “Emanuel Maiberg expresses interest in the proposition.” Gemini, to little surprise, did not detect that Emanuel was being heavily sarcastic, a beautifully human act.
I then tried to opt us out of these sorts of Gemini features. I logged into Google Workspace, clicked the “Generative AI” drop down menu on the left, then clicked “Gemini app.” I changed the service status to “OFF for everyone.”
Nope, that’s wrong. The Google spokesperson told me that button referred to gemini.google.com, which is the Gemini app, not its integration with Workspace. I also tried in another section called “Gemini for Workspace” which sounded promising but that wasn’t helpful either.
I actually had to go to account, account settings, and “Smart features and personalization” where an administrator can set a default value for users. The spokesperson clarified that individual end users can go turn it off themselves in their own Gmail settings. They pointed to these instructions where users disable “smart features.”
💡
Do you know anything else about how Google is using AI? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at +44 20 8133 5190. Otherwise, send me an email at [email protected]. But it looks like it’s all or nothing. You can’t turn off just the new Gemini stuff without also disabling things like Gmail nudging you about an email you received a few days ago, or automatic filtering when Gmail puts emails into primary, social, and promotion tabs, which are features that Gmail has had for years and which many users are probably used to.
On iOS, you go to settings, data privacy, then turn off “Smart features and personalization.” A warning then says you’re about to turn off all the other stuff too that I mentioned above and much more. On Android, you go to settings, general, and then “Google Workspace smart features.”
Turning these off doesn’t actually get rid of the Gemini button at the top right of the inbox. It just means when you do click it (maybe by accident because it’s right next to the button to switch to a different inbox), it’ll prompt you to once again turn on smart features. It does get rid of the summarize this email button, though.
My first thought when I saw the “Summarize this email” button was, oh god, people are going to be submitting all sorts of sensitive, confidential business information into Gemini. We’ve already seen that with ChatGPT, and organizations have to write policies to stop employees doing it. And now you’re making that process one click, directly in the inbox? In its Privacy Hub page, Google says “Your content is not used for any other customers. Your content is not human reviewed or used for Generative AI model training outside your domain without permission.” I do not know if I have given permission or not, though, that’s part of the problem.
“You’ll see these end user settings will become even clearer and easier for people to use in the coming days as we’re rolling out updates (happening now) with language that’s specific to Gemini in Workspace features,” the spokesperson told me.
I hope so.
