Google Gemini Introduces Personal Intelligence To Personalize AI Responses Using Data From Users’ Connected Apps – AfroTech
Google Gemini is becoming more personalized with a new feature that tailors chatbot responses using data from users’ connected apps.
Josh Woodward, Google’s vice president of Google Labs, Gemini, and AI Studio, announced the opt-in feature — called Personal Intelligence — in a blog post on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. The update allows Gemini to draw on information from apps such as Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, and Google Photos to deliver more relevant and contextual responses.
“Personal Intelligence has two core strengths: reasoning across complex sources and retrieving specific details from, say, an email or photo to answer your question,” per the blog post. “It often combines these, working across text, photos, and video to provide uniquely tailored answers.”
How Personal Intelligence Works
In the blog post, Woodward shared several examples of how his “daily life has gotten easier” since using Personal Intelligence. In one instance, he asked Gemini for help buying new tires for his vehicle without specifying his car model or driving habits. Using information from his emails and photos, the chatbot identified his vehicle’s model, tire size, and travel patterns, then offered tires options with pricing and ratings.
When Woodward needed his license plate number at the counter of the service center, Gemini retrieved it from a photo stored in Google Photos, he shared in the post. The chatbot also helped identify his van’s specific trim level by searching through Gmail.
Addressing privacy concerns, the Google blog post mentioned that the data used by Personal Intelligence “already lives at Google securely,” meaning it does not need to be sent to external systems to generate personalized responses. Woodward also noted in the post that Google doesn’t train its systems on users’ personal Gmail inboxes or Google Photos libraries. Systems only understand how to locate that information when asked.
Google shared in the post that Personal Intelligence may not always be accurate. Per the blog post, the system can struggle with timing and may occasionally produce incorrect responses or engage in “over-personalization,” where the model draws connections between unrelated information. The blog post encouraged users to provide feedback when this occurs by giving responses a “thumbs-down” rating.
Per the blog post, Google is starting to roll out access to Personal Intelligence to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. The feature can be enabled via Gemini’s settings under Personal Intelligence > Connected Apps. In the post, Woodward shared that the launch of Personal Intelligence “marks our next step toward making Gemini more personal, proactive, and powerful.”
Google will be providing the feature to more countries and to the free tier in the near future, as well as AI Mode in Search.
