• Google denies circulating claims of exploiting email content to develop AI technologies
• Company says smart-feature settings have existed for years and are unrelated to model training

Google has denied social media reports alleging the company changed its policies to use Gmail messages and attachments to train its AI models, and that disabling “smart features” like spell check is the only way to opt out.

Company spokesperson Jenny Thomson said that “these reports are misleading — no settings have been changed, Gmail smart features have been around for years, and email content is not used to train the AI model.”

Internal reviews showed that some users who had previously disabled certain smart features found them re-enabled automatically.

In January, Google updated its smart-feature personalization controls so they can be turned off separately for Google Workspace and other Google products such as Maps.

Smart features include, in addition to spell check, functions like order tracking and automatically adding flights to the calendar.

The settings page notes that enabling these features allows Workspace content to be used to personalize the experience, though Google stresses this does not include using email content for AI training.