Google on Wednesday began inviting Gemini users to let its chatbot read their Gmail, Photos, Search history, and YouTube data in exchange for possibly more personalized responses.
Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs, Gemini and AI Studio, announced the beta availability of Personal Intelligence in the US. Access will roll out over the next week to US-based Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers.
There’s a lot of people claiming “no one wants this”.
Thing is, people loved this when they introduced it with Google Now back in 2012. They literally used to trawl your inbox and tell you when to expect packages, when you had appointments, when your flight and hotel were booked for/when to leave for the airport.
All of that was useful information and it was free. Later their assistant could call to book you a table at a restaurant or add things to your shopping list or whatever. Some of this functionality started off very clunky, but it could absolutely be useful. But slowly but surely people started realizing that they were the product and that in order for Google Now and assistant to do this stuff it had to be reading emails and processing information in the cloud. We didn’t have devices that could do that kind of processing on phone.
After backlash (and likely because it wasn’t making them any money because they hadn’t figured out how to monetize the product yet), Google got rid of Google Now and Google Assistant took over.
it did some of the same things but distracted users from what was missing with flashy new hardware and smart home things. Lots of people loved that stuff too.
Then Sonos sued and forced them to kneecap their products. Suddenly the honeymoon was over in a big way. Some of the most basic smart home features were broken and in such a way that people who used them were irate.
Some of those integrations and functionality returned eventually. But right in the middle of that Google launched Gemini and it sucked at most all of it. It keeps getting “better” supposedly. But for a lot of smart home users the magic has been lost. They want what they had and lost and Gemini isn’t even a reasonable facsimile of that.
So it’s more that people are frustrated with Gemini and angry at Google for killing another service they found useful.
People still want technology to make their lives easier and more efficient. But they also want privacy and for things to just work. Google hasn’t made a product that just worked in a long time and AI isn’t going to be it.
You mean for you. That this was your experience. Not “many people”. Many people don’t attribute conspiracy like planning to the megacorporate give, most understand that no matter the ceo the goal was always, for any “free” service to make you the product. Many people took that deal