Tushar Mehta / Android Authority
When Google started its operations in the late 1990s, it set out to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Despite continual, and sometimes secretive, iteration, the clause remains intact in its mission statement. With the AI boom, Google wants to make information accessible without any significant effort, and is extending these principles beyond web search. Last month, it extended the same altruistic virtues to Google Drive, where you now see AI overview-style summaries for your folders. With this change, Google’s AI will look through your folders, any directories within them, the files stored in them, and even the contents of those files, so you can find whatever you’re looking for immediately.
These “smart” features in Google Drive are available to all paying Gemini subscribers and Workspace users. Google says it saves time and helps you discover files buried under several layers of folders. But I’m deeply unsettled by Google raking through my files — especially without my explicit consent — and the only solution I feel I have now is to stop trusting Google with anything private.
Do you want Google Drive to generate an automatic overview of your folders, files, and their contents? 31 votes Yes, it helps me organize those files 3 % Yes, but I'd like some restrictions 26 % I'm against it entirely 71 %
Google Drive’s “smart” features drive me crazy
Tushar Mehta / Android Authority Drive doesn't need your explicit permission to look through files
I have been using Google Drive for nearly as long as it has been around. Over these 13+ years, I moved much of my private life to it for quick access. That means Google Drive has always been where I store all my education and work-related records, all certifications, and digital copies of almost all my IDs. Having done so has allowed me to avoid carrying all of them with me or accessing them when I least expected to need them — even when I was required to sign into a random computer at a printing shop. The convenience just made me stick.
But Google’s recent push to use AI features more aggressively and to start digging into the files I store in Drive or the ones I receive over Gmail (the latter was also implemented very recently) has really upset me.
What truly moved me was how blatant and in-your-face these summarization features are. Google now boldly claims that it looked through my files and has a lowdown on everything that’s in there. Every time I open a folder, it’s eager to give me a summary up top — without me even asking. I open a PDF, and it springs right up, outlining the document for me.
Tushar Mehta / Android Authority PDF summaries show up by default, too
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