Summary
- Google’s Personalised Intelligence pushes familiar brands, narrowing result diversity.
- If enabled, Gemini tailors answers using Gmail, receipts, and brand interactions.
- Turn off Personalised Intelligence in Gemini settings to get less biased, more objective results.
It’s no surprise that Google AI is deeply integrated into our daily decision-making, offering tools designed for convenient daily use. Your alarms, updates on your commute, even making you aware of your flight delays; seamless integration with an AI “personal assistant” can often feel like magic. However, it turns out that these conveniences may also have significant implications, such as the personalisation of search results that can limit viewpoint diversity.
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iPullRank recently tested nearly 2,000 Google AI Mode responses, and found that brands connected to a user’s Personal Intelligence data appeared dramatically more often in results. In accounts linked to services like Gmail, certain brands showed up in AI answers almost three times as frequently and were far more likely to appear in the top recommendations.
This is only the case if you have enabled Google’s “Personalised Intelligence” features. If so, Gemini uses your Gmail, Google Pay receipts, and brand interactions to tailor answers to your past spending habits, instead of providing the most objective results.
This is a significant finding for a search tool, which could have a serious impact on how we use the internet. Why bother comparing prices and products on independent review sites, when the AI has already done the work and already tells you to choose the brand you’ve bought before? Prioritising familiarity over objective price or value can limit our exposure to better alternative options, and new perspectives diminishes.
How to turn off Google’s Personal Intelligence
If you prefer a search engine that looks at the objective world rather than your email history, you need to check your settings and review your privacy settings. Although Google’s Personal Intelligence AI needs user opt-in, it’s worth asking yourself if this is what you want to sign up for.
If you have this enabled, and want to turn it off, here’s how.
- Open Gemini’s Settings
- Select Personal Intelligence
- Click Connected Apps
- Toggle off access to services like Gmail.
Google has not yet confirmed how AI Mode rankings and recommendations are generated – this report was carried out by external researchers. Ultimately, though, Google is a business, with KPIs likely focused on advertising revenue and user engagement/retention. If you want to see the real world, not just the version that matches your shopping history, it might be time to think about tightening those privacy settings, or swapping to an AI-free browser.
