Google is facing a lawsuit that alleges its AI assistant, Gemini, was used to intercept and monitor private communications on Gmail, chat, and video‑conferencing services without users’ knowledge or consent. The complaint, filed in a California federal court, says Google secretly enabled Gemini to access these applications in October, allowing data collection without user permission. While Google provides an option to disable the AI assistant, the lawsuit claims that turning it off requires navigating the company’s privacy settings; unless users take this step, Gemini allegedly accesses and exploits the entire recorded history of their private communications, including every email and attachment in Gmail.
The suit asserts that Google’s actions violate the California Invasion of Privacy Act, a 1967 law that prohibits secret wiretapping and recording of confidential communications without the consent of all parties. Gemini, launched in 2023, is a family of AI models designed to process and generate text, code, audio, and video.
This is not the first privacy controversy involving Google. In September, the company was ordered to pay $425.7 million to settle a class‑action lawsuit alleging it collected data from users of third‑party applications even when tracking settings were disabled. That case, originally filed in 2020, claimed the data collection began in 2016. Gemini has also been linked to other issues, including reports that hackers from more than 20 countries used the chatbot to gather information for cyberattacks.
Google’s handling of user data continues to draw scrutiny, and the current lawsuit underscores ongoing concerns about privacy and transparency. The outcome could have significant implications for Google and its users regarding data protection. As the company further develops and integrates AI technologies like Gemini, users will need to stay informed about how their data is used and take steps to safeguard their privacy.
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