have a secret component that gives the company an edge over competitors like OpenAI or Anthropic. This ingredient is dataand it’s just scratching the surface of what it can do with your information to “personalize Gemini’s answers.”
Google began allowing users to opt in to the “Gemini With Personalization” feature in January, which allows the AI model to tap into your search history to “provide responses that are uniquely insightful and directly addressed your needs”. Now, Google is going a step further to provide you with more personalized AI-generated answers.
On Tuesday, Google announced “personal context,” a feature that will allow Gemini models, with your permission, to pull relevant data from Google’s apps. Google does this by introducing Gmail’s personalized intelligent replies, which are AI-generated messages you can use as a quick reply to emails.
Gemini will analyze your emails and Google Drive files in order to create a personalized reply. Google says that the response will incorporate your tone, greetings you use most often, and even your “favorite words choices.” Google says that if you are chatting with a buddy and asking for road trip advice, Gemini will search your emails and files to find hotel reservations, and an itinerary. It can then suggest an appropriate response. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the keynote that this could help you “become a better friend.” It appears Google plans to bring personal context outside Gemini as well, as its announcement blog postsays, “You can imaginehow helpful personal contextual will be across Search and Gemini and more.” Google announced in March that users will eventually be able to connect their YouTube history, Photos library, and other Google services with Gemini.
Google’s access to a wide range of data could make Gemini a far superior product than OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It starts with a clean slate when it meets a new user. ChatGPT won’t know where someone likes to shop, what their favorite foods are, or how to compose an email. It will need to receive several responses before it is able to refer to its old conversations and memories. It’s the same for other AI chatbots that don’t have access to Google’s vast data sets, like Anthropic’s Claude.
Gemini, if given permission, can access all of this data — and more — from the start. This makes it an even more useful AI assistant, and you don’t need to have interacted with it before for it to “know you”.
