You may have seen headlines this week about Google's Gemini and human review. The picture in Google's own documentation is narrower than the headlines, and more useful: there are two sets of rules, and which one applies depends on the account you're signed in with.
That makes this less a story about Gemini than about your team's accounts. The same assistant, asked the same thing, can sit under different privacy terms depending on whether someone used their work account or their personal one.
Work accounts: Google Workspace
Google's privacy hub for generative AI in Workspace, the version businesses pay for, says:
- "Gemini does not share your content outside your organization without your permission."
- "Your content is not used for any other customers."
- "Your content is not human reviewed or otherwise used for Generative AI model training outside your domain without permission."
On the Gemini app with a Workspace account, it says: "Your chats and uploaded files won't be reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to train generative AI models outside of your domain without your permission."
Note the words "without your permission". Feedback is one example of a user choosing to share. If a Workspace user sends feedback, Google says it can include "The user's prompt, contextual sources (such as documents or email messages), and the generated output; only if the checkboxes to share the prompt and output remain selected by the user", and that such feedback "is not used to train any of the generative AI models that support Google Workspace Generative AI Services." The same page also says third-party apps used with Gemini are "governed by different terms and is not subject to this article."
Personal accounts: the Gemini app
Google's privacy help page for the Gemini app on personal accounts is just as plain, and it says something different:
"A subset of chats are reviewed by human reviewers (including Google's trained service providers) to help improve Google services."
It explains that reviewers "assess if Gemini Apps' responses were low-quality, inaccurate, or harmful", that "Chats are disconnected from your account before being sent to service providers", and that "Reviewed chats are retained for up to three years."
There's a control, with a limit. "To stop your future chats from being reviewed to improve Google services, turn off your Keep Activity setting." But the page adds: "Even if your Keep Activity setting is off or you use temporary chats, Google still uses your chats to respond to you and help protect Google, our users, and the public, including with help from human reviewers."
And Google's own advice for when the setting is on: "If that setting is on, don't enter data that's confidential or that you wouldn't want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve its services."
What this is, and what it isn't
Both pages are Google describing its own products, and they don't contradict each other. They describe two different services. What Google's consumer page says can be reviewed is chats, meaning what's typed into and returned by the assistant. Neither page says Gemini routes people's Drive files or emails to reviewers on its own, and you shouldn't read that into it. The routes these pages describe are chats on personal accounts, and feedback that a user chooses to send. But if someone pastes client material into a chat on a personal account, that material is now part of a chat.
It's also different from the issue we wrote about recently, where a coding tool put a user's email address in front of the model by default. That was about data reaching the model by default, with no documented way to turn it off. This is documented behaviour, with documented settings, that changes with the type of account.
A short audit for your business
- Which accounts does your team use for client work? If anyone uses a personal Google account for it, even occasionally, the consumer terms apply to those chats.
- Where does client material live? If it's in a personal Drive, it's one paste away from a personal-account chat.
- What's the Keep Activity setting on personal accounts that touch work? And remember Google says that even with it off, chats are still used to protect Google, its users and the public, including with help from human reviewers.
- Do staff know about feedback? Even on Workspace, feedback with the share boxes ticked can include prompts and documents.
- Put client work in the work domain. It's the boring fix, and it means the Workspace privacy page is the one you can show a client.
Sources: Google, "Generative AI in Google Workspace Privacy Hub" (last updated 6 October 2026), and Gemini Apps Privacy Hub help page; both read 10 November 2026. Policies change, so check the current pages before relying on any detail here.