Hey there,

Over the past two years, we’ve seen increasingly powerful AI models. But despite how powerful they’ve become, they’re still lacking the personal context needed to make them fit seamlessly into our lives. Google has taken a big step toward correcting this with their new Personal Intelligence feature. This new feature connects to your Google accounts, giving Gemini the personal context it needs to be fully integrated into your everyday life. This week we’ll explore what Personal Intelligence can do for you as well as what exactly it can access. 

What is Personal Intelligence?

Personal Intelligence is a new Gemini feature that connects your Google apps (like Gmail, Photos, Youtube, and Search) to your Gemini account. In other words, Gemini can now act as your personal assistant on any tasks or questions involving information saved within your Google account. Of course this feature is disabled by default and must be manually activated. But when you do turn it on, it unlocks several powerful new abilities. 

Retrieving Details:

Personal Intelligence gives Gemini the ability to instantly find and share details that would otherwise be difficult or time consuming to find. Google gives us an example of having to buy something for your car and Gemini being able to find all the necessary information by looking through your photos. Based on my own experiences with Personal Intelligence, I found it excellent at sifting through massive amounts of information and finding specific details. You can get daily email summaries or just the highlights to help combat the flood of information we often get. In the below example I asked for a summary about my 2024 YouTube watch history and got an accurate answer in seconds. 

Building Understanding: 

While pulling specific data can definitely be useful, Personal Intelligence can also do more than just fact retrieval. By using all the information you choose to share, it can give personalized recommendations and tailored responses just for you. This can be anything from creating customized vacation destinations / itineraries to simply recommending books based on your YouTube history. The usefulness of this feature directly correlates to the amount of information you give it. 

The Big Question: What About Privacy?

A feature with this level of access does raise some important privacy questions. Yes, you are giving Gemini access to lots of details about your personal and professional life. Let's go over some important points. 

• It’s Off by Default: You are still in control of your data and can use Gemini normally unless you choose to turn this feature on. 

• Your Data Stays at Google: One positive of this feature is that you don’t need to share your data with a third-party company to get the benefits. Instead your data stays secure within Google’s ecosystem. 

• It’s Not Used For Training: This is the most important point to understand. Gemini isn’t training on your sensitive data but is instead filtering out your personal data from the prompts and responses. 

How to Access It

Currently only Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S. can enable Personal Intelligence. Google will be continuing to roll out this feature for free users sometime in the near future. 

In the meantime, you can enable Personal Intelligence through the Settings menu in Gemini. Once you click on “Personal Intelligence”, you can select which Google products you want to connect to Gemini. 

My Thoughts: 

Based on my experiences with Personal Intelligence, I've been incredibly impressed with its current offerings and its future potential. While most companies are focusing solely on powerful models, Personal Intelligence brings a level of personalization that I think AI must achieve to successfully be integrated into our daily lives. 

Of course this new feature won’t be for everyone. Having to give access to personal areas of your life like Calendar or Gmail is something that will make some people hesitate for good reason. It’s important to remember that this feature is still in Beta and has some flaws. It can easily misinterpret your data, for example, and assume that you love golf (because you have tons of pictures at a golf course) but in reality you just have pictures of your son who loves to golf. More importantly, Personal Intelligence is also susceptible to prompt injection attacks. When you combine access to personal data with the inherent risk that AI models bring, you’ll get some people who don’t think that the potential upsides outweigh the risks.  

As this feature continues to roll out, I’d recommend heading to Gemini and experimenting with it yourselves.