A few weeks ago, I explicitly disabled it everywhere I could find within account.google.com and I’ve not used anything gemini since. Now I get this email and find it enabled on my devices.
By default Gemini has permissions to access everything on screen, view your contacts/messages, and can be used from the lockscreen…
I’m not all that surprised; but I’m still annoyed. Especially with the opt-out of data collection/access after it’s been given access to everything.
I strongly suspect the Gemini team is trying to artificially inflate the usage statistics for it by opting people in without their consent and requiring you to replace assistant with Gemini in order to access popular tools like image gen.
It’s likely that in a few months they’ll get exposed, probably not even get a slap on the wrist for it, and go back to their shady business practices.
Come to GrapheneOS where your phone just leaves you the fuck alone and does what you ask of it.
This is the way. I resisted doing a custom ROM based on past experience, but GrapheneOS is absolutely worth it. The day I saw Gemini in the text messaging app is the day I bit the bullet. Wish I did it sooner
Or any degoogled ROM for that matter
It’s crazy the peace of mind you get from it.
what’s the privacy vs pure security info? is GrapheneOS actually keeping our data more private or just making it really hard to get hacked?
I’ve been on it for like a week now and love it
Security is the priority, but that does usually give you a good amount of privacy too.
One example I remember where there was a clash was developing their sandboxed Google Play Services rather than supporting MicroG. I think their reasoning was that sandboxing the Google code makes it much more secure, and even though MicroG is more private from Google it’s still a mystery blob with full access to your device and therefore less secure.
Can I install on a Samsung? I know computers and their bootloaders/OSs pretty well but phones are mostly a mystery
No its only available on Pixels for security reasons.
What does the pixel have that an S24 doesn’t?
Honestly don’t know. Something to do with the Tensor chip and monthly and quarterly software updates.
I tried Gemini before. The problem was reliability.
E. g. I say “add an event to my calendar: tomorrow 2 p.m., doctor visit”, and it parses the voice perfectly. The regular assistant would then just create the entry.
But Gemini sometimes goes like: “Adding an entry to your calendar is easy! Do you have an iPhone? Then these are the steps: …”
This is why LLMs are not appropriate for applications where regular syntax is needed, like calling an API. I don’t understand why they made the LLM the first step, handing it off to the old hard coded Google assistant second, rather than the other way around. Having everything go through the LLM first is wasteful, slow and unpredictable. I am very confused about Google’s decision here
on my devices
See that’s where we’re fucking up. If a company can install things on ”your” devices, it’s really their devices.
Google “SafetyCore” says hello.
When’s Google gonna put Gemini on the Google Home/Nest devices? I’d switch to 'em if they end up getting Gemini on them, the amount of times I ask my Echo Dot a simple question that it can’t answer but Gemini can is ridiculous.
