Tell HN: Gemini uses your email drafts (if you have "smart features" turned on)

2 points by logicallee 4 days ago · 4 comments · 2 min read

If you use Gmail, I think you all should know that if you turn your "smart features" on (a setting in gmail), the contents of your email drafts will make it into public-facing AI-generated content you generate. (I did have a chance to review it).

It was surprising behavior to me that's worth keeping in mind.

Detailed story:

I usually keep "Smart features" turned off in Gmail, however, I was using Google Gemini and file upload didn't work. I therefore shared from my Google drive, which required turning on "Smart features" in my gmail, so I did so.

Later, I was reading this announcement about a Google robot on Hacker News on my phone:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49111237

I started typing out a response on Hacker News but decided to make it a higher-quality comment so I saved my draft in gmail, and sent a second email to myself. I intended to continue working on these on my desktop.

I decided that I would like to include a survey people could fill out for Google to show what's important to them, and so once at my desktop I started a Google form. When I opened Google forms it now allowed me to use a prompt to generate my form, so I prompted it to make a survey of what's important to people in home robotics.

Instead of only using my prompt to make the Google form (which is what I would have expected) it also used my gmail draft and the email I had sent to myself.

This may be of concern, since you may be using Gemini to create public-facing documents, whereas you may consider your drafts or emails private, confidential, trade secrets, etc. For example, consider a company that discusses upcoming features it is discussing internally by email, and also, separately, generating AI content about its existing product, doing market surveys, etc.

It may be a surprise that the content AI generates effectively publishes the private emails and even drafts.