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    Data Privacy and AI for Google and Microsoft accounts

    By AidenPosted on Posted in UncategorizedTagged , , , , , , , , ,

    AI has been the tech buzzword for the last year, but behind all the technical jargon, information about what it is or how it may use your data can be murky. We’re here to explain it in plain language. We’ll also show you how to take control of the settings in your accounts to enable or prevent access to your information.

    What is AI?

    What the media calls AI is a complex computer algorithm, or lines of code, that determine how software will respond when presented with different requests. Depending on what the program is built for, that request may be asking ChatGPT to write a thank you letter, having Google use your camera to translate a street sign, flag banned words or tags from social media posts, generate a picture based on a written description, and so much more. The program learns how to respond to situations it’s designed for by being shown millions of examples and their past responses. With enough examples it is able to pick out patterns and learn to respond the same way when a new request comes in which fits that pattern. It has a myriad of real world benefits, from helping blind people navigate the world with smart glasses to saving astronomers untold time analyzing photos of the night sky to helping scientists identify cancer cells in tissue samples. It can improve our lives in a myriad of ways.

    How does AI affect me?

    There is no arguing that AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but it does come with concerns. The data centers with computers that AI are stored on require massive amounts of electricity to power1 and water to cool, worsening environmental and financial challenges we’re already facing. Many data centers are located in low-rainfall regions where water is already scarce2, leaving less for homes and crops. If you happen to live in an area with several AI data centers, your electricity bill will increase faster than elsewhere. Places like Santa Clara, California – where 60% of the city’s electricity is already consumed by over 50 data centers3 – are at higher risk for blackouts due to demand increasing faster than power companies can improve infrastructure.

    Even if you don’t live near a data center, virtually everyone is impacted in some way. The information that companies use to train their AIs has to come from somewhere, and the first place they look is the internet. Web pages, social media and more are all fair game. AI web crawlers often ignore website’s requests to not harvest their data, or when one is blocked a new one is created4. They can send millions of requests in a day, driving up the cost of running a website without paying the owners for the data they are using5. Artists, musicians, reporters, and writers who’s creations were used to train AI without their consent are getting less work now that free AI tools let anyone easily create content that mimics their style6. This has opened up a new battleground for copyright law being fought in courts around the world7.

    Thankfully your data is not publicly available. You can’t get ChatGPT to regurgitate that embarrassing tweet about a celebrity or blog rant about that food you hate just by asking it the right question. That information is almost certainly already a part of the massive dataset it relies on every time it generates a reply, however. Some websites make agreements with AI companies to profit from selling their data for AI training, and others engage in an endless game of whack-a-mole trying to block the data from being scraped. Whatever the stance, their users are almost always none the wiser.

    Clearly AI has the potential for both great good and great harm. Here at Advantage we have used it from time to time to quickly draft newsletters, and have also watched the evolving landscape of personal data privacy with concern. We are not advocating an all-or-nothing approach, but rather that it is worth taking the time to review your privacy stance and consider the cumulative impact of AI when deciding to use it.

    What about Google and Microsoft?

    In the last few days both Google and Microsoft have rolled out AI tools or changed default privacy settings for users in ways that allow them to use your personal data to train their AI tools. Previously Copilot was a separate subscription you had to pay for. Microsoft has now bundled it with 365 and increased the price accordingly, pushing it out to Microsoft Office and computers signed in with a Microsoft account. Google has added Gemini features to their services for all users over age 18, allowing it to use your data for AI training by default8. For those wishing to change what data is shared with these companies, we’ve built instructions on how to change those settings.

    If you are a contracted business client with questions about your company’s privacy settings for Microsoft or Google, please submit a ticket with us. For personal users concerned about the privacy of their data, follow the instructions below. If you find disabling any of the settings listed in this guide causes features to stop working that are important to you, they can always be turned back on again.

    Microsoft 365

    Disabling Copilot

    1. Launch Microsoft Word and click on File on the upper left.
    2. Click on “Options” in the lower left.
    3. In the pop-up window, click on the Copilot tab on the left. Uncheck the “Enable Copilot” box and click OK at the bottom.
    4. Close all open instances of Word. When you open it again, the Copilot button will now be grayed out.

    Privacy Settings

    1. Launch Microsoft Word.
    2. Click on File in the upper left.
    3. Click on Account in the lower left, then the Manage Settings button under Account Privacy.
    4. Scroll down and uncheck the box for sending optional diagnostic data.
    5. Scroll to the bottom and make sure the box for personalized offers is unchecked.
    6. Scroll back up and confirm the box for Downloading Online Content is checked. (This does not appear to share your data.)
    7. Continue scrolling up and review the details for Connected Experiences that analyze your content. This setting will affect certain features that you may find useful, such as dictation and translation, editing suggestions, PowerPoint Designer, and certain collaboration tools. A technical page with full details can be found here.
    8. Click the OK button at the bottom.
    9. Click OK to close the notice.
    10. Whenever you’re ready, close all open windows of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.). When re-opened, the new privacy settings will be in effect.

    Gmail

    Disabling Gemini

    1. Open a browser and go to the Google Gemini website and sign in if prompted.
      • Note that simply visiting this page may result in an automated email arriving in your inbox within the next 24 hours, titled “You’re now using Gemini on web”, regardless of what extensions you turn off.
    2. Click the three line menu in the upper left, then Settings, then Extensions.
    3. If welcomed with a pop-up prompt, click Dismiss.
    4. Review the various sections and decide the settings you prefer.
    5. Scroll down through other sections and adjust the settings as you prefer.

    6. Once all settings have been reviewed, you can close the page.

    Disabling Smart Features

    Note: There is always a balance between data privacy and convenience. Some users may find Google’s assistive features helpful enough to warrant the access to their data. We recommend everyone review the affected features in Google and decide for yourself. The settings pages include a summary of affected features, and additional information can be found on this Google support page.

    1. In a browser, go to Google Drive and sign in if prompted.
    2. Click the Gear icon and select Settings.
    3. In the new window, click on Privacy, then the Manage Workspace smart feature settings button.
    4. Read through the options and determine if you would like the features on or off.
    5. If you choose to toggle off either of the settings, click Save when you’re done.
    6. Switch to Gmail by clicking on the dot menu button, then clicking on Gmail.
    7. Click on the gear icon, then See all settings.
    8. Scroll down to the section for Smart features and personalization. Review the descriptions and decide if you want to leave them on or disable them.
    9. If you choose to uncheck either box, you will get a confirmation message. Look over the affected features and confirm you want to disable them.
    10. If click the “Turn off features” button you’ll get a prompt to reload the website.
    11. You can now close the page.
    1. https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/AI-poised-to-drive-160-increase-in-power-demand ↩︎
    2. https://cee.illinois.edu/news/AIs-Challenging-Waters ↩︎
    3. https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-08-12/california-data-centers-could-derail-clean-energy-goals ↩︎
    4. https://www.npr.org/2024/07/05/nx-s1-5026932/artificial-intelligence-web-crawlers-are-running-amok ↩︎
    5. https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/25/24205943/anthropic-ai-web-crawler-claudebot-ifixit-scraping-training-data ↩︎
    6. https://www.wcnc.com/article/features/originals/charlotte-artist-elliana-esquivel-artificial-intelligence-ai-scrape-artwork/275-b7c79345-b9cf-4dd4-b685-459515f6c25f ↩︎
    7. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/14/nx-s1-5258952/new-york-times-openai-microsoft ↩︎
    8. https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/13594961?visit_id=638733569935352676-2236513476&p=privacy_help&rd=1#what_data ↩︎

    Data Privacy and AI for Google and Microsoft accounts
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