Google was sure to mention privacy and security at its annual Google Next conference — right as it’s wrapping up past privacy issues with another product.
The tech giant touted the “enterprise grade security and privacy” on Gemini Pro 1.5. That includes an AI security add-on for Google Apps.
Businesses that use Google Workspace “can automatically classify and protect sensitive files and data using privacy-preserving AI models trained for their organization,” Aparna Pappu, VP of Google Workspace, said during the company’s keynote presentation in Las Vegas Tuesday.
Google’s new AI security add-on is a nod to the wider conversation in the works about data privacy in the tech sector, as tech giants and startups alike race to develop generative artificial intelligence technologies. Chatbots have been under scrutiny for privacy failures. AI girlfriends pry “as much data as possible” from users, researchers have found, and non-girlfriend AI chatbots have collected and spilled their users’ secrets.
Google’s new data security features were revealed just after Google put to bed a multi-year legal battle over privacy issues with Chrome. The company was accused of misleading customers into thinking its web browser’s “Incognito” mode was actually incognito, and therefore wasn’t tracked by the company. But Google was, indeed, collecting users’ data even when they turned on Incognito mode. Google agreed last week to delete “billions of data records” associated with users’ private (or so they thought) browsing history, finally settling a class action lawsuit from 2020.
But Google has been transparent about the data it tracks via Gemini (users’ queries and locations, for example) and has openly warned users not to offer its AI chatbot personal information.
In the industry overall, companies from Salesforce to Microsoft have added privacy features to their AI products. OpenAI released a privacy feature early after coming under intense scrutiny from European regulators over its potential data privacy violations, while Microsoft’s privacy updates came in December of 2023.