You're not alone: This email from Google's Gemini team is concerning
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Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
Maybe this gives me a false sense of security but I bought the adguard pro on social stack (I think...). I just turn all of the connections off on gemini, meta and Bixby. Like this
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Just saw there's a sort of large Lemmy degoogle community
https://lemmy.world/c/[email protected]
Personally I think it's a good start to just replace Google applications. Organic Maps over Google Maps. Proton Mail/Drive/VPN/Calendar over Google stuff. Firefox and forks over Chrome. Duckduckgo over Google search. After that you can maybe find an old old Google Pixel phone and then start flashing ROMs off XDA forums as practice before you try a newer more expensive phone
Ok!!! Thanks. I've done all that, so I Think I'm degoogling. It's Hard to avoid Android in my country, you risk to be out of communication Networks
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Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
Laughs in eu
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Maybe this gives me a false sense of security but I bought the adguard pro on social stack (I think...). I just turn all of the connections off on gemini, meta and Bixby. Like this
Why do you keep Gemini installed? Does it even work offline?
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Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
At least so far Samsung is letting me disable Gemini, as I try to do to any bloatware I don't want running in the background.
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I don't have Gemini loaded to my phone and I have Google assistant voice command disabled
But a few days ago I was having a conversation with my son next to me on the couch with my phone sitting on the arm of the couch.
When I asked him a question, gemini answered with a prompt on the screen I have never seen before and haven't since.
It still creeps me out
I looked up what the prompt for gemini is supposed to lol like and this looked nothing like that. It looked more like a popup dialogue box from a browser but the only browser I use is opera and it is set as default
Iirc internal browsers for apps default to a system browser not to your chosen one
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Apple isn't gonna have your back on this either you minds well run to foss forever if this is gonna be your Hill to die on
minds well
/c/boneappletea
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At least so far Samsung is letting me disable Gemini, as I try to do to any bloatware I don't want running in the background.
I have a Pixel phone im bout to throw in the river
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IMO, when Google lost most public support, it really started going downhill because the people who wanted to profit the business as much as possible became more determinant than those that were still trying to throttle the company due to ethical considerations. When a company gets criticized for everything it does, its decline increases significantly. Add to that it exists under the US government and how that has completely fallen to corruption.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]When a company gets criticized for everything it does, its decline increases significantly.
Gives me hope for the future of MS then! Maybe they will decline themselves out of dominance.
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Apple has been seriously underperforming on their AI strategy.
Really makes it easy to keep using their devices.
It’s also nice because I can just turn that shit off with one toggle.
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Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.
Well I guess I’m glad I moved over to apple. But I guess the enshitification of all our phones is coming soon.
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I have a Pixel phone im bout to throw in the river
Why not throw graphene or another alternative on it (if supported) instead of turning it into e-waste?
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I do have it disabled, but this article suggests that it will ignore that and it will be integrated in apps that I really really don't want it in. I could stomach it if it was search and other functionality like that only, or even if it 100% ran local with no ability to phone home and train on my data, but it doesn't. Not that it can be listening to calls, reading messages, etc, I'm definitely hard out.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I think the article is misunderstanding what is happening (though to be clear I think the email is at fault for that). Google is making it so that app developers can integrate Gemini better by allowing Gemini to interact with those apps. There is a menu inside Gemini where you can switch these interactions on and off (Inside Gemini, click your profile in the upper right corner and press apps in the menu).
I'm assuming from the email that this will be enabled by default which is a choice they've made and which absolutely could be argued as invasive. That being said you'd actively have to use Gemini and have it be active on your phone in order for it to interact with those apps.
Assuming Google records whatever you do on your phone whenever you do those things, which many privacy minded people of course legitimately worry about and feel uncomfortable with to various degrees, this is not really anything but another way for your assistant to do more things. If they want to read your stuff that's not really dependent on a switch in the Gemini app.
So if you have Gemini entirely disabled I don't think this is relevant. Only if you actively seek to use it and do not want it to be able to integrate with external applications will these settings be relevant to you.
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Why do you keep Gemini installed? Does it even work offline?
I assume it's better to leave it and have it not work, then them sneak it on without me knowing or baking it into something else
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How are you evaluating inferior? I like the AI search. It's my opinion. You have yours.
Well, in this example, the information provided by the AI was simply wrong. If it had done the traditional search method of pointing to the organization's website where they had the hours listed, it would have worked fine.
This idea that "we're all entitled to our opinion" is nonsense. That's for when you're a child and the topic is what flavor Jelly Bean you like. It's not for like policy or things that matter. You can't just "it's my opinion" your way through "this algorithm is O(n^2) but I like it better than O(n) so I'm going to use it for my big website". Or more on topic, you can't use it for "these results are wrong but I like them better"
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This is my fourth comment shilling SFOS here, but it just might be what you're looking for. It is my daily driver.
Wish it was supported in more countries.
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I was at Google when it came out, I was like "sure this would be fine to use too, but everybody is on chat and Gmail and I kind of need to actually reach people..."
I think they just figured it would get dogfooded automatically because it was slicker than chat and Gmail, but under time pressure you're just not gonna do it unless you have to.
And there was zero chance I was going to get anybody in my personal life to use it.
We used it for our dev and systems groups at my former company for a while and really enjoyed it compared to anything else that was around. When it went away, we switched away to IRC due to how easy it was to host and maintain. I actually don't see a big overlap between Wave and chat and Gmail for how people use it, but I suspect that was a big part of the problem. The uses where Wave was superior didn't really catch on until Slack came on the scene and had MS and Google then scrambling to make similar tools.
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Just... Disable it. You can switch to the old assistant.
I've got them both turned off lol
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You guys are really making me consider GrapheneOS.
Its what made me buy a pixel phone.
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Android is Linux… sure.
But it’s not what anyone means when they say they want a Linux phone.
Its a vexingly pedantic point.
