Google Hit with Data Privacy Lawsuit After ‘Secretly’ Turning On Gemini AI for All Users

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges that Google is tracking consumers’ private communications without consent after “secretly” turning on Gemini AI, and leaving it on by default, for all Gmail, Chat and Meet users.

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According to the 21-page lawsuit, on or about October 10, 2025, Google quietly began to utilize “Smart Features”—including Gemini, its flagship AI program capable of tracking, analyzing, and storing private information—for Gmail, Chat, and Meet users. Until recently, the class action lawsuit explains, Google users could opt in to effectively turn on Gemini to use in conjunction with the tech giant’s other services to “personalize [their] experience.”

However, the lawsuit contends that it is “deceptive and outrageous” for Google to, by default, enable Gemini to “exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received in their Gmail accounts.” To turn off Gemini, a Google user must now proactively go into their account settings and turn off the feature, the suit says.

The plaintiff, an Illinois consumer, accuses Google of “falsely characterizing its illusory privacy controls” while unconscionably depriving proposed class members of their right to privately send and receive communications.

“The ramifications of unauthorized access to voluminous private communications can be severe, and individuals accordingly go to great lengths to safeguard not only their own email and messaging accounts, but, in the case of parents and guardians, also that of their minor children,” the filing reads.

Related Reading: $30M Google, YouTube Settlement Aims to Resolve Children’s Privacy Lawsuit

The complaint goes on to describe the level of information Gemini AI could have feasibly scraped from the plaintiff’s phone. The lawsuit alleges Gemini AI potentially had access to “financial information and records, employment information and records, religious affiliations and activities, political affiliations and activities, medical care and records, the identities of his family, friends, and other contacts, social habits and activities, eating habits, shopping habits, exercise habits, the extent to which he is involved in the activities of his children (if any), and what those activities are.”

The lawsuit continues by asserting that the tracked data “enables Google to cross-reference and conduct unlimited analysis toward unmerited, improper, and monetizable insights into users’ private lives, including their social, professional, and other relationships.”

A Pew Research Center study cited in the class action lawsuit shows that 93 percent of adults believe that maintaining control of who can access their information is important. Another 90 percent believe controlling the information collected from them is important, the filing relays.

The Google Gemini class action lawsuit looks to cover anyone in the United States with a Google account whose private Gmail, Chat, and Meet messages were tracked by Gemini AI after Google turned on “Smart Features” in their information privacy account settings on or about October 10, 2025.

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