Connected Apps: what 'we don't train on your inbox' actually covers

Connecting apps is how Gemini stops being a chat window and starts being something that knows your calendar. Google's description of what it then does with that material is carefully worded, and the care is where the useful detail lives.

What you can connect

On a personal account: Google Workspace content (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Keep, Tasks, Chat and Meet), Google Photos where eligible, Search services including Search, Maps, Shopping, Flights, Hotels, Translate and News, YouTube, and Contacts. Contacts is narrower than the rest, being US and English only and requiring an AI Ultra subscription.

Connections are managed under Personal Intelligence.

The sentence, and the sentence after it

Google states that Gemini "does not train generative AI models directly on your Gmail inbox, Drive, Contacts, Calendar or other Workspace apps or on imagery or audio from your Google Photos library".

Read the qualifier. Directly, and on your inbox.

The following statement is the one that changes your decision: summaries, excerpts, generated media and inferences drawn from that content may be used for training if your Keep Activity setting is on.

Human review reaches here too. A subset of Connected Apps data is reviewed by trained service providers, and Google says interactions are disconnected from your Google Account before that happens.

Work and school accounts, and a repository

On a work or school account the shape changes in the way that matters most: you cannot enable connections yourself. Access "must be enabled by your Workspace administrator".

The connectable set is different too. Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Docs, Drive, Keep, Tasks, Classroom, and GitHub repositories.

That last one is the reason a developer should read this page. A GitHub connection is a standing grant to source code, rather than a one-off attachment like the repository upload described in uploading files and a whole repository.

Google's page on work and school accounts also carries a plainer warning than most vendor documentation manages: connected apps "can hallucinate responses or provide outdated information". A connector makes the answer feel sourced. It does not make it correct.

Try this

Ask Gemini something that could only be answered from a connected app, such as what your week looks like. Then open Personal Intelligence and check which apps are actually connected. People are routinely connected to more than they remember agreeing to, because the grant happens inside a feature prompt.

What goes wrong

Reading "does not train on your inbox" as "nothing from my inbox is used". Summaries and inferences are covered by a different sentence.

Treating Keep Activity as only a retention setting. It also governs whether derived material trains models, and whether memory works at all.

Expecting to connect apps on a work account. Your administrator decides, and you cannot override it.

Leaving a GitHub connection in place after the task that needed it. It is a standing grant, not an attachment.

Trusting a connector-sourced answer because it cites your own data. Google states plainly these can hallucinate or be out of date.

How to check it worked

Disconnect an app you no longer need, then ask a question that previously worked and confirm the answer is now unavailable rather than stale. For anything sensitive, check which account you were on when you connected, because that decides which terms apply, and the consumer and Workspace positions on derived material are not the same.