Google's Personal Intelligence is a transparent data grab disguised as convenience, launching suspiciously the same week Apple emphasized genuine privacy protections for Gemini integration. The examples Google provides are laughably unnecessary — needing AI to find tire sizes or license plates reveals a system designed to harvest personal data for advertisers rather than solve real problems. Apple's approach proves AI can deliver capabilities without exploiting user information for profit.
Personal Intelligence represents a breakthrough in making AI genuinely useful by allowing it to understand individual users with their explicit permission. Generic models can't suggest plans based on travel dates in Gmail or hobbies in Photos because they lack personal context. This secure reasoning across user data creates a digital assistant that's uniquely helpful rather than generically useless.
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