The cybersecurity expert added, \u201cYou have to manually turn off Smart Features in the Settings menu in TWO locations.\u201d<\/p>\n
They highlighted these two locations in a screenshot.<\/p>\n
![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/man-holding-smartphone-google-gmail-118378135.jpg\")
Some X users wondered why disabling the Smart settings turned people\u2019s email into a disorganized mess. Diego \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n
The Post reached out to Google for comment.<\/p>\n
Per the post, desktop and laptop users would have to click on the \u201cSee all settings\u201d tab, go the \u201cSmart features\u201d setting, and unselect \u201cTurn on smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next, click \u201cManage Workplace smart feature settings,\u201d after which you\u2019ll be directed to a secondary pop-up that will allow you to check and uncheck features in Google Workspace and other Google products.<\/p>\n
By deactivating these functions, Gmail users will switch off the \u201cAsk Gemini\u201d feature that provides a content summary, suggestions from Google Assistant and the Gemini App, and other features.<\/p>\n
![\"Settings](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/gmail-users-wish-private-messages-118378067.jpg\")
The settings in question. \u201cIMPORTANT message for everyone using Gmail,\u201d engineering Youtuber Davey Jones wrote in a viral X PSA on this alleged digital Trojan Horse. \u201cYou have been automatically OPTED IN to allow Gmail to access all your private messages & attachments to train AI models.\u201d Google<\/p>\n
Changing these settings on Smartphones, meanwhile, requires users to pull up their settings page (located at the bottom of the inbox menu) and click on \u201cdata privacy,\u201d the Huffpost reported.<\/a> This will allow them to deactivate \u201cSmart features\u201d and go to the \u201cGoogle Workspace smart features\u201d to follow suit for Workspace and Google products.<\/p>\n The one caveat is that doing so will also disable a lot of useful tools as well. These include features like \u201csmart compose,\u201d the function that filters emails into \u201cpromotional\u201d and \u201csocial\u201d inboxes, and even bare necessities like spell-check, grammar check and autocorrect.<\/p>\n As a result, this can render people\u2019s Gmail a disorganized, ransom note-esque mess.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, good. It also disables inbox categories,\u201d griped one disillusioned user.<\/a> \u201cWonderful. Why do they have to keep making things progressively s\u2014tier.\u201d<\/p>\n Others wondered why the aforementioned email categories were now only available with AI, when users had previously been able to access them without it. \u201cHow come email categories been working for over 5 years now without Gemini stuff and now when you disable gemini stuff email categories are gone????? How do you explain that huh?!?!?\u201d One <\/a>spluttered.<\/p>\n This comes on the heels of a November 25 lawsuit filed by Illinois resident Thomas Thele. In it, he claimed that on October 10, 2025, \u201cGoogle secretly turned on Gemini for all its users\u2019 Gmail, Chat, and Meet accounts, enabling AI to track its users\u2019 private communications contained in those platforms without the users\u2019 knowledge or consent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAs of the date of this filing, Google continues to track these private communications with Gemini by default, requiring users to affirmatively find this data privacy setting and shut it off, despite never \u2018agreeing\u2019 to such AI tracking in the first place,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n A Google rep told the HuffPost via email that the reports are \u201cmisleading.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cGmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model,\u201d they claimed, adding that they practice utmost transparency when updating their \u201cservice and policies.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Has Google got its AIs on you? A tech expert is urging Gmail users to switch off several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,284,113,1996,105],"class_list":["post-397542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cybersecurity","tag-google","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}