Google today announced that it is expanding Personal Intelligence to more people in the United States. First introduced earlier this year, it was limited to paid Google AI subscriptions, but now most free accounts will have access to the feature.
Gemini can now provide contextual responses
Google is rolling out Personal Intelligence starting today for AI mode in Search, as well as the Gemini app and Gemini in Chrome for free-tier accounts. It’s only limited to personal Google accounts and not available for Workspace business, enterprise, and education users.
Personal Intelligence connects Gemini to the Google ecosystem, including Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube, and Search history, with your permission. It can pull information from these services instead of explaining preferences every time the person asks a question. Over time, the AI already knows what you like, what you bought, and where you have been. This makes it shine in everyday scenarios instead of having to hunt through emails or photo albums.
In the announcement blog post, Google highlighted practical use cases of Personal Intelligence. It can deliver tailored shopping recommendations based on past purchases, help troubleshoot devices using purchase history, customize an itinerary based on interests, and discover hobbies. The feature can provide restaurant recommendations during layovers by factoring in your food preferences, gate locations, walking distances, and boarding times. This level of context goes beyond traditional assistants.
Privacy is still central
Google has made Personal Intelligence an opt-in by default. You can choose which Google apps and services to connect to the AI, and they can also be disconnected anytime. Google confirmed that Gemini doesn’t use the person’s data in Gmail or Photos to train AI models. It is used only to answer specific queries. Still, this raises privacy concerns when the assistant can access years of emails, photos, and search history in exchange for convenience. This is because Personal Intelligence’s usefulness is directly related to how much data you’re willing to share, if it’s not already in one of the Google services connected to Gemini.
By making personal intelligence available to free-tier users, Google’s advantage is in its ecosystem—billions of people rely on its services. This puts the search giant ahead of its competition, especially Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Copilot in the personal AI assistant race.
Source: Google
