The rapid development of neural networks has long raised concerns among experts about ensuring privacy when interacting with such algorithms. This week brought another confirmation that these concerns are not unfounded. A user of the social network X, Kevin Bankster, pointed out that Google's Gemini neural network automatically scans PDF files stored in Google Drive without obtaining explicit user consent.
“I just opened my tax return in Google Docs and Gemini summarized it without permission. So… does Gemini automatically scan even personal documents that I open in Google Docs? I didn’t ask for this. Now I need to find new settings that I was never informed about to disable this,” Bankster wrote on his X account.
What exactly caused Gemini's behavior is not yet clear. According to the algorithm itself, the privacy settings used to inform Gemini should be openly accessible, but that is not the case. This may mean that either the algorithm is providing false information, or some internal systems at Google are clearly malfunctioning. In any case, it does not reflect well, even if we assume that the neural network does not use personal user data for training.
As for Bankster, after some time he wrote that he was able to find an option in the settings that, when activated, allows Gemini to scan documents in Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Drive. He noted that the option was turned off, but for some reason, the algorithm still scanned the document and generated a summary based on it. Bankster believes that the issue could be related to his registration in Google Workspace Labs in 2023, which may have caused the Gemini settings to apply incorrectly.
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Source: 3dnews.ru
