This post recycles a viral wave that first spread in November 2025 and was publicly disputed by Google at the time. A Google spokesperson told Newsweek: "These reports are misleading, we have not changed anyone's settings, Gmail Smart Features have existed for many years, and we do not use your Gmail content for training our Gemini AI model."

The Verge reported the same statement from Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson.

The originating chain ran through an X post by Dave Jones (@eevblog) and reporting by Malwarebytes, which corrected its original article after Google's statement.

The setting the post tells users to untick is not new. Google announced a dedicated setting for "smart features and personalization" in a blog post roughly six years before this Instagram post, describing it as a control over whether Gmail, Meet and Chat data can be used to offer smart features in those and other Google products, giving tabbed inbox, Smart Compose and Smart Reply as examples.

Google's current help documentation describes smart features as covering automatic email filtering into Primary, Social and Promotions, Smart Compose, Smart Reply, and summary cards above emails for travel and package tracking, and states that the Gmail, Chat and Meet setting is separate from the Google Workspace smart features setting.

There is a genuine 2026 development the post gestures at. On January 8, 2026, Gmail VP of Product Blake Barnes published a blog post announcing that Gmail is entering the "Gemini era," with AI Overviews summarizing threads and answering questions, plus Help Me Write, Suggested Replies and Proofread.

The Register reported that these features would be on by default but can be disabled, and that Google said it is not going to use personal message text to train its foundational models and performs AI processing in an isolated environment.

On the deeper Gemini inbox access feature, the better sources say it is opt-in. 9to5Google reported that Personal Intelligence, which can pull details from Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Photos, YouTube and Search, is off by default and lets users choose which apps to connect, and that Google says "Gemini doesn't train directly on your Gmail inbox or Google Photos library."

At the global rollout in April 2026, 9to5Google again described Personal Intelligence as "explicitly an opt-in feature," with per-app control at any time.

The Washington Post, covering the same feature, described it as off by default while noting it raises genuine new privacy questions. Lower-quality blogs assert the opposite. One blog claims that on March 11, 2026 Personal Intelligence became available to all US account holders with "No opt-in requirement" and is "on by default."

Another blog covering the same March 2026 expansion states the feature is opt-in. These two low-authority sources contradict each other and the specialist reporting.

On advertising, Google's own policy documentation contradicts the post. Gmail Help states that personalized ad selection in Gmail is fully automated and based on online activity while signed into Google, and explicitly says: "We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads."

On spam, Google's documentation contradicts the post directly. Google Workspace documentation states that by default Gmail scans all email messages for spam and that "You can't turn off Gmail's spam scanning." Email categorization into Promotions and Social tabs is a smart feature and does stop, but that is inbox sorting, not spam filtering.