Google Startles Workspace Users, Activates Smart Features by Default

Google has started turning on its Workspace smart features by default . These changes mean that Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Chat, and Meet now use Gemini AI to process personal content, unless people choose to switch these settings off. Many users, including me, recently found these settings enabled automatically.

Google’s help page says that these smart features are on by default in most regions except the EU, Switzerland, the UK, and Japan. Privacy laws in those places require users to make a choice before turning on smart features. Outside those regions, many users are noticing the options preselected, which allows AI tools to read their Workspace content and cross-reference that information across services.

In response to claims that Google trains its AI on users' Workspace materials, the company told The Register it does "not use your Workspace data to train or improve the underlying generative AI and large language models that ...