Asger Risom
Gemini’s Personal Intelligence offers a glimpse of AI’s future
For years, tech companies have promised assistants that understand users on a deeply personal level. This week, Google moved closer to that vision, revealing a tool that feels less like a demo and more like a turning point.
The result is impressive, unsettling, and hard to ignore.
A quiet launch
Google recently introduced a feature called Personal Intelligence to AI Mode in Search and to its Gemini chatbot, according to reporting by Business Insider. The tool allows Gemini, with user permission, to draw on a person’s Google account data to answer questions more contextually.
That includes information from Gmail, Google Photos, Search history, YouTube activity, and other services. Business Insider reporter Pranav Dixit tested the feature and described it as unusually powerful.
“Personal Intelligence feels like Google has been quietly taking notes on my entire life and finally decided to hand me the notebook,” he wrote.
Connecting the dots
Unlike other chatbots, Gemini does not start from a blank slate. Dixit reported that when he asked for sightseeing ideas for his parents, the chatbot suggested museums and gardens, correctly inferring they had already done hikes and forest trips.
When asked how it knew, Gemini explained it had pieced together clues from family emails, photos from Muir Woods, parking reservations, and past searches. Dixit said this level of reasoning went beyond what he had seen from ChatGPT or Claude.
Pre-empting concern
Google appears aware the feature could alarm users. Josh Woodward, a Google vice president, said the company takes steps to “filter or obfuscate personal data” in Gemini conversations, according to Business Insider.
“We don’t train our systems to learn your license plate number; we train them to understand that when you ask for one, we can locate it,” Woodward wrote.
In practice, Dixit found Gemini could identify his license plate from photos in Google Photos and tell him when his car insurance was due based on emails in his inbox.
A glimpse of the future
The system also adjusted travel plans after recognising that Dixit now has an infant, based on his account history. He said this is the kind of assistant AI companies have been promising since chatbots took off in 2022.
Meta has described its long-term goal as “personal superintelligence,” an AI that deeply understands users. But Dixit argued that while Meta talks about that future, Google has effectively delivered it already.
