Gmail's AI Summaries Highlight A Growing Problem With Google's Gemini Expansion

It feels like every time you turn around, there's another new AI-powered feature coming out for Google's various applications, like Docs, Sheets, and even Gmail, which is the latest Google Workspace to get even more of a Gemini treatment. It now offers AI-powered summaries of all the emails in your inbox. While there's a whole conversation to be had about the privacy implications of letting Gemini in your inbox, the arrival of this feature only further highlights one of the biggest problems with Google injecting Gemini into all of its apps: it doesn't offer users any way to control when and where the AI works. 

Currently, Google offers several Gemini-powered features across its different apps. You can use the AI to create tables and format information in Google Sheets, or let it write for you and rephrase content in Google Docs. Now, with AI summaries rolling out, you can let it read your emails and tell you what it deems the most important information you need.

For me, being able to easily create tables in Google Sheets using Gemini makes more sense than letting it read all of my emails, but the way that Google has set up the way users manage these features is far too simplistic. Instead of enabling users to toggle the features they want on and off, you either have to subscribe to the full suite of AI functionality or miss out on everything.

Google's various Gemini upgrades to Docs, Sheets, and its other Workspace apps can be useful in certain cases. The company recently released an AI-powered organization feature for Google Drive that I have been loving, for example. Not everyone will always find the same level of usefulness in all of the AI features that Google offers, though.

That said, the company's idea for how to manage its "smart" AI features feels completely out of touch. That's because if you don't want Gemini to read your emails, you have to turn off all smart features in Workspace. There is no way to simply opt out of Gemini in Gmail and keep everything else on. You have to accept that Gemini will be turned off for everything. 

Now, I'm sure there is an argument to be made here about how powerful Gemini Intelligence can be, and why it needs access to all of your data, but I can't help feeling like Gemini is trying to take over everything on my devices. However, for those like me, who have no interest in feeding Google any more of their information and data than they have to, but who would still like to use some of Gemini's features, you're only left with the option of just accepting that your data is going into the Google machine if you want to use these convenient features at all.

While I would love to see Google come up with a more in-depth solution for controlling where Gemini is used in Workspace, the fact that it remains to be an all-in or all-out toggle also makes sense. There are going to be a lot of people who just want to disable it altogether for one reason or another — whether that is privacy concerns or even just having no interest in the AI features. And with so many different features to keep track of, locking it all under a single toggle is the easiest solution, especially with how widespread Google is likely trying to reach with these features.

However, even giving users a small amount of more control would be a better solution than what they get now. Generative AI can be helpful in a lot of ways. Automating tasks, for example, in Docs and Sheets is much easier with it. But having to give the AI unfettered access to all of your private information in Gmail shouldn't be the cost that users have to pay.