Gemini Personal Intelligence: What It Reads and How to Turn It Off

Personal Intelligence is Google's name for Gemini using your own Google data to answer you. Once you opt in, Gemini can draw on your Contacts, Google Photos, Google Workspace (Gmail, Calendar and Drive), Search services (Search, Maps and Shopping) and YouTube history, alongside your past chats and custom instructions, when it decides how to answer. Google documents all of this on its Personal Intelligence overview and in a Gemini help article. The short version: it is opt-in, it is per-app, and every part of it can be switched back off.

Key Takeaways

• It is opt-in, and it is granular. Nothing connects until you say so, and you choose the apps one at a time rather than all-or-nothing.
• Five app groups can connect: Contacts, Google Photos, Google Workspace, Search services, and YouTube. That is the whole list Google publishes today.
• Four countries are excluded. Google says it is rolling out "to eligible users globally, except for the European Economic Area, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria."
• You must be 18 or over and on a personal Google Account. Work, school and supervised accounts do not get it.
• Google publishes no plan requirement. The gates are country, age, account type and your activity settings -- not Free versus AI Pro.
• Personalized image generation went free for eligible US users on June 29, 2026, having previously required a paid Google AI Plus, Pro or Ultra plan.
• Switching it off for one chat does not delete anything. To make Gemini forget something you have to delete the chats and disconnect the app.

What Personal Intelligence Actually Does

It changes what Gemini is allowed to look at before answering. Google's own description is that Gemini "determines if your custom instructions, past chats, or information from your connected Google apps could be helpful in formulating an answer." In practice that means you can ask "what did I search for last month?", ask for a trip itinerary that reflects places you have already been, or ask for photos from your last holiday, and Gemini can go and get the answer instead of asking you to paste it in.

The other half is images. With Personal Intelligence connected to Google Photos, Gemini can put you and the people you have labelled in your photo library into generated images without you uploading a reference picture each time. Google's help centre puts the gate plainly: "If you're in the US and meet other requirements, Nano Banana 2 can also use Personal Intelligence to create and edit images tailored entirely to you."

If the idea of an assistant that acts on your behalf is new to you, our plain-terms guide to what an AI agent actually is covers the wider shift this belongs to.

Do You Get It? Availability at a Glance

Google gates Personal Intelligence on four things, and none of them is your subscription.

Google also calls it a beta that is "being released gradually," so meeting every gate above does not guarantee you see it today. The tell is simple: open gemini.google.com, and if you are eligible a card appears offering to switch it on.

The United Kingdom, EEA, Switzerland and Nigeria exclusion is the same set of four Google applies to Gemini Spark, so if you are a UK reader who has already run into that wall, this is the same wall.

What Each Connected App Hands Over

Connecting is per-app, so it is worth knowing what each one actually gives Gemini before you tick it. Google's list is exactly five groups -- there is no sixth.

Two things are worth flagging. First, Google warns that even when an app is disconnected, "Gemini Apps can still use public information from certain Google services, like Google Search and YouTube" -- disconnecting stops the personalization, not every use of those products. Second, if you had connected Google Workspace or Google Photos to Gemini before, Google reset those settings when Personal Intelligence launched, so you may need to reconnect deliberately.

The Settings You Have to Turn On First

Personal Intelligence quietly depends on several separate Google Account settings, and each one silently removes a chunk of the feature if it is off.

This is the part most people miss. If you have previously locked your Google Account down -- and if you have, you may well have arrived here from our guide to turning off Gmail's AI features -- Personal Intelligence will either not appear or will work only partly, and Google does not tell you which setting is responsible.

How to Turn It On

On a computer, go to gemini.google.com. If you are eligible, a card appears offering Personal Intelligence. Click Get started, then either Connect all to connect every available app, or Choose apps to pick individually. Don't connect declines it. You can change any of it later.

How to Turn It Off

There are three different "off" switches here and they do different jobs. Pick the one that matches what you actually want.

Two limits are worth knowing before you rely on the per-chat switch. Gemini "can still use earlier parts of that chat as context" after you flip it, and new chats start with Personal Intelligence on again -- the setting is remembered per conversation, not globally. If your goal is a conversation that leaves no trace at all, Google points you at a temporary chat instead, because switching personalization off does not stop the chat being saved to Gemini Apps Activity.

How to Make Gemini Forget Something

This is the one genuinely counter-intuitive part, and Google is unusually explicit about it: you have to do two things, and doing one is not enough.

1. Delete every chat containing the information, from Gemini Apps Activity or from Recent chats.
2. Disconnect the app the information came from.

Google's reasoning: "If you only disconnect the app, Gemini might still use the info if it's in a past chat. If you only delete the chats, Gemini might still find the info in the connected app." Note too that deleting something inside a connected app -- an email, a photo -- may not change what Gemini sees "until days later."

What About Training?

Google's position, stated when it launched personalized image generation, is that the Gemini app "does not directly train its models on your private Google Photos library," and that it trains on "limited info, like specific prompts in Gemini and the model's responses." Connecting your Google apps is described as opt-in and adjustable in settings at any time. That is Google's claim, published on its own blog; we have not seen an independent audit of it, and none exists that we can point you to.

The Image Generation Change Worth Knowing

If you are in the US, the useful recent news is that this got cheaper. When Google first connected Personal Intelligence to image generation in April 2026, it was for "U.S. subscriber[s] to Google AI Plus, Pro, or Ultra." On June 29, 2026 Google dropped that paywall: "Starting today, all eligible users in the U.S. can experience deeply personalized image generation in Gemini for free." Google restated it in the July 2026 Gemini Drop as "now available to all users in the US."

One paid difference survives: per Google's help centre, you download generated images at 2K resolution with a Google AI plan and 1K without one. If you are weighing that plan anyway, our breakdown of which AI chatbot is worth paying for has the full comparison.

Should You Turn It On?

Turn it on if you already live inside Google -- Gmail for mail, Photos for pictures, Maps for places -- and you are tired of pasting context into a chat box before Gemini can help. That is the case it genuinely solves, and connecting a single app group (Search services, say, and nothing else) is a reasonable way to test it without handing over your mail.

Leave it off if your Google Account holds work you would not want summarized by an assistant, if you share the account's devices, or if you have already deliberately switched Google's smart features off -- turning them back on to enable this undoes that choice across other products too.

You cannot have it at all if you are in the UK, the EEA, Switzerland or Nigeria, under 18, or signed in with a work, school or supervised account. In that case the practical question is which of Gemini's other features you do get, and our comparison of ChatGPT vs Gemini for everyday use is the better starting point.

The bottom line: Personal Intelligence is the most consequential privacy switch in the Gemini app, and it is genuinely under your control -- opt-in, per-app, and reversible. The catch is not that it is sneaky; it is that "off" means three different things depending on which switch you use, and that forgetting requires two steps rather than one.