The Software as a Service (SaaS) model is great because you get new features fast and easily compared to standalone apps. All a user has to do usually is to refresh the web browser tab and boom, the new stuff appears.
That is exactly what happened this end, when I reloaded the Google Workspace tab and a dialogue appeared, announcing Gemini Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now available in Gmail.
There was nothing I needed to do, nor the admin in charge of Google Workspace. Gemini AI's right there, in a window, ready for Business and Enterprise subscribers to prompt it.
What's so bad about that? Well, AI is now integrated into your organisation's productivity apps. That's email, documents, spreadsheets, presentations and it processes your organisation's data. That's not a small feature add-on. It's a big change, that needed prior notification and explicit consent, neither of which were forthcoming from Google.
You could argue that Google already does data processing, like for Gmail spam filtering and for showing "relevant" ads in unpaid accounts. That is true, but AI is a next-level different kettle of fish that can get things wrong. Apple has had to drop its AI notifications summaries because they were terrible for example.
For most users, AI is black box tech that they don't fully understand. Some people do, and have figured out how to get around guardrails in the technology, to use it for abusive purposes as Microsoft which is massive on AI, noted.
If you don't want Gemini AI in Workspace, tough. As Joseph Cox at 404Media discovered, you can only partially get rid of it.
Will your organisation's information leak to Google? That's hard to say, because Google says it won't happen without your permission. As Joseph points out, the trouble here is that he doesn't know if he has given permission, or not.
This is what Google says:
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Safeguarding your interactions with AI
We know that data security, confidentiality, and compliance are top priorities for business leaders when adopting AI, and we are committed to helping you keep your data safe.
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Your data is your data: We don’t use your data, prompts, or generated responses to train Gemini models outside of your domain without permission. We don’t sell your data or use it for ads targeting.
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You are in control: We built Gemini with enterprise-grade controls to help you roll out Gemini while protecting your sensitive data. Gemini only retrieves relevant data that the user has permission to access, and your existing Workspace data security and sovereignty controls are automatically applied.
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You can stay compliant: Gemini for Workspace and the Gemini app are one of the first generative AI productivity solutions to attain a comprehensive set of safety, privacy, and security certifications, including SOC 1/2/3, ISO 27001/17/18, and ISO 42001, and can help you meet HIPAA compliance.
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This sort of forced enrolment into AI use is jarring to say the least. It made me wonder if Google Workspace accounts that use the tech giant's Advanced Account Protection which the company "strongly recommends that journalists, activists, business executives, and people involved in elections enroll [sic]" is subject to the same potential information leakage to Gemini AI, despite the big promise of keeping users' information secure.
Furthermore, there's no free AI lunch. While you don't have to pay an additional US$32 a month for Gemini, the subscription price per user still goes up by US$2 per month. A Workspace Business Plus subscription "will be automatically updated" (jeez Google, did Gemini come up with that phrase?) to NZ$22 a month.
It's entirely possible that there are useful aspects to Gemini for Google Workspace, but to paraphrase the Internet Lord of the Rings meme, "one does not simply walk into AI". It's fair to assume that Google, like Microsoft which has also slapped Copilot AI onto its subscribers' accounts while hiking prices, were concerned that the uptake of the technology was low as users weren't sure about it.
The tech giants may have invested billions in AI, but adding it like this smacks of desperation.
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