"If you don't want this data used to improve Google's machine learning models, you can opt out by following the steps in Set up Gemini Code Assist for individuals."

and then the link: https://developers.google.com/gemini-code-assist/docs/set-up...

If you pay for code assist, no data is used to improve. If you use a Gemini API key on a pay as you go account instead, it doesn't get used to improve. It's just if you're using a non-paid, consumer account and you didn't opt out.

That seems different than what you described.

It's even more nuanced than that.

Google recently testified in court that they still train on user data after users opt out from training [1]. The loophole is that the opt-out only applies to one organization within Google, but other organizations are still free to train on the data. They may or may not have cleaned up their act given that they're under active investigation, but their recent actions haven't exactly earned them the benefit of the doubt on this topic.

[1] https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/googl...

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/10549751

That said, once your data is inside an LLM, you can't really unscramble the omelette.

We need open infrastructure and models.

They get a ton of tax incentives, subsidies, etc to build shoddy infrastructure that can only be used for big box stores (pretty much), so the end cost for Walmart to build their stores is quite low.

They promise to employ lots of locals, but many of those jobs are intentionally paid so low that they're not actually living wages and employees are intentionally driven to government help (food stamps, etc), and together with other various tax cuts, etc, there's a chance that even their labor costs are basically at break even.

Integrated local stores are better for pretty much everything except having a huge mass to throw around and bully, bribe (pardon me, lobby) and fool (aka persuade aka PR/marketing).

There is a reason why rural communities welcome Wal-Mart with open arms. Not such a big deal now that you can mail-order anything more-or-less instantly, but back in the 80s when I was growing up in BFE, Wal-Mart was a godsend.

The latter wasn't what most people think of as a Sears store, because the local economy could never have supported such a thing. It was more like a small office with a counter and a stockroom behind it. They didn't keep any inventory, but could order products for pickup in about a week. Pickup, mind you. You still had to drive to town to get your order. As stupid as this sounds, it was 10x worse in person.

So if Wal-Mart didn't exist, it would have had to be invented. It was not (just) a monster that victimized smaller merchants and suppliers, a tax scam, or a plot to exploit the welfare system. It was something that needed to happen, a large gap in the market that eventually got filled.

Nowadays I wouldn't set foot in one, but it was different at the time. I didn't mean to write a long essay stanning for Wal-Mart, but your original post is a bit of a pet peeve.

Also, did you read my original comment and miss the part about Walmart and co being predatory businesses? That's why they can keep those prices so low, because they're socializing their costs to everyone else.

It may have shifted where people buy things they can wait for, but for weekly shopping I don’t think it has.

Walmart spread so successfully precisely because so many people immediately started shopping there for all of the basics.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil

If the data is sent by a user to sub-unit X of Google, and X promised not to use it for training, it implies that X can share this data with sub-unit Y only if Y also commits not to use the data for training. Breaking this rule would get everyone in huge trouble.

OTOH, when sub-unit X said "We promise not to use data from the public website if the website owner asks us not to", it does not imply another sub-unit Y must follow that commitment.

"You can find the Gemini Code Assist for individuals privacy notice and settings in two ways:

- VS Code - IntelliJ "

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/tree/main

If you scroll to the bottom, it says that the terms of service are governed based on the mechanism by which you access Gemini. If you access via code assist (which the OP posted), you abide by those privacy terms of code assist, one of the ways of which you access is VScode. If you access via the Gemini API, then those terms apply.

So the gemini CLI (as I understand it) doesn't have their own privacy terms, because it's an open source shell on top of another Gemini system, which could have one of a few different privacy policies based on how you choose to use it and your account settings.

(Note: I work for google, but not on this, this is just my plain reading of the documentation)

I guess the key question is whether the Gemini CLI, when used with a personal Google account, is governed by the broader Gemini Apps privacy settings here? https://myactivity.google.com/product/gemini?pli=1

If so, it appears it can be turned off. However, my CLI activity isn't showing up there?

Can someone from Google clarify?

When you look at the github repo for the gemini CLI:

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/tree/main

At the bottom it specifies that the terms of service are dependent on the underlying mechanism that the user chooses to use to fulfill the requests. You can use code assist, gemini API, or Vertex AI. My layperson's perspective is that it's positioned as a wrapper around another service, whose terms you already have accepted/enabled. I would imagine that is separate from the Gemini app, the settings for which you linked to.

Looking at my own settings, my searches on the gemini app appear, but none of my gemini API queries appear.

However, as others pointed out, that link take you to here: https://developers.google.com/gemini-code-assist/resources/p... Which, at the bottom says: "If you don't want this data used to improve Google's machine learning models, you can opt out by following the steps in Set up Gemini Code Assist for individuals." and links to https://developers.google.com/gemini-code-assist/docs/set-up.... That page says "You'll also see a link to the Gemini Code Assist for individuals privacy notice and privacy settings. This link opens a page where you can choose to opt out of allowing Google to use your data to develop and improve Google's machine learning models. These privacy settings are stored at the IDE level."

The issue is that there is no IDE, this is the CLI and no such menu options exist.

Are you saying the Gemini Apps Activity switch controls? Or, that if I download VS Code or Intelli J and make the change, it applies to the CLI? https://developers.google.com/gemini-code-assist/docs/set-up... says "These privacy settings are stored at the IDE level."

This depends entirely on the type of auth method you use.

    Auth method 1: Yes. When you use your personal Google account, the Gemini Code Assist Privacy Notice for Individuals applies. Under this notice, your prompts, answers, and related code are collected and may be used to improve Google's products, which includes model training."

Off-topic, but I wish this kind of plain language doc existed for Google One vs Google Workspace as well.

Well... you are sending your data to a remote location that is not yours.

EDIT: Lmao, case in point, two sibling comments pointing out that Google does indeed do this anyway via some loophole; also they can just retain the data and change the policy unilaterally in the future.

If you want privacy do it local with Free software.

I hope this is something they're working on making clearer.

I haven't tried Gemini since the latest updates, but earlier ones seemed on par with opus.

The newer models are quantized and distilled (I confirmed this with someone who works on the team), and are a significantly worse experience. I prefer OpenAI O3 and o4-mini models to Gemini 2.5 Pro now.

If I were you I'd assume they're using all of it for everything forever and act accordingly.

*What we DON'T collect:*

- *Personally Identifiable Information (PII):* We do not collect any personal information, such as your name, email address, or API keys.

- *Prompt and Response Content:* We do not log the content of your prompts or the responses from the Gemini model.

- *File Content:* We do not log the content of any files that are read or written by the CLI.

https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/0915bf7d677...

    wget https://cosmo.zip/pub/cosmos/bin/python -qO python.com
    chmod +x python.com
    ./python.com

    ./python.com -m pip download Click
    mkdir -p Lib && cd Lib
    unzip ../click*.whl
    cd ..
    zip -qr ./python.com Lib/
    ./python.com # can now import click

[1]: https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/commit/4e9566cd3328626d...

Even senior programmers can misuse tools, happens to all of us. LLMs sucks at software design, choosing algorithms and are extremely crap unless you exactly tell them what to do and what not to do. I leave the designing to myself, and just use OpenAI and local models for implementation, and with proper system prompting you can get OK code.

But you need to build up a base-prompt you can reuse, by basically describing what is good code for you, as it differs quite a bit from person to person. This is what I've been using as a base for agent use: https://gist.github.com/victorb/1fe62fe7b80a64fc5b446f82d313..., but need adjustments depending on the specific use case

Although I've tried to steer Google's models in a similar way, most of them are still overly verbose and edit-happy, not sure if it's some Google practice that leaked through or something. Other models are way easier to stop from outputting so much superfluous code, and overall following system prompts.

Which pretty much means if you are using it for free, they are using your data.

I don't see what is alarming about this, everyone else has either the same policy or no free usage. Hell the surprising this is that they still let free users opt-out...

That’s not true. ChatGPT, even in the free tier, allows users to opt out of data sharing.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/openai-appeal...

* The first section states "Privacy Notice: The collection and use of your data are described in the Gemini Code Assist Privacy Notice for Individuals." That in turn states "If you don't want this data used to improve Google's machine learning models, you can opt out by following the steps in Set up Gemini Code Assist for individuals.". That page says to use the VS Code Extension to change some toggle, but I don't have that extension. It states the extension will open "a page where you can choose to opt out of allowing Google to use your data to develop and improve Google's machine learning models." I can't find this page.

* Then later we have this FAQ: "1. Is my code, including prompts and answers, used to train Google's models? This depends entirely on the type of auth method you use. Auth method 1: Yes. When you use your personal Google account, the Gemini Code Assist Privacy Notice for Individuals applies. Under this notice, your prompts, answers, and related code are collected and may be used to improve Google's products, which includes model training." This implies Login with Google users have no way to opt out of having their code used to train Google's models.

* But then in the final section we have: "The "Usage Statistics" setting is the single control for all optional data collection in the Gemini CLI. The data it collects depends on your account type: Auth method 1: When enabled, this setting allows Google to collect both anonymous telemetry (like commands run and performance metrics) and your prompts and answers for model improvement." This implies prompts and answers for model improvement are considered part of "Usage Statistics", and that "You can disable Usage Statistics for any account type by following the instructions in the Usage Statistics Configuration documentation."

So these three sections appear contradictory, and I'm left puzzled and confused. It's a poor experience compared to competitors like GitHub Copilot, which make opting out of model training simple and easy via a simple checkbox in the GitHub Settings page - or Claude Code, where Anthropic has a policy that code will never be used for training unless the user specifically opts in, e.g. via the reporting mechanism.

I'm sure it's a great product - but this is, for me, a major barrier to adoption for anything serious.

If this is legal, it shouldn’t be.

If this is due to compliance with law I wonder how they can make the zero-data-retention agreement work... The companies I've seen have this have not mention that they themself retain the data...

The resulting class-action lawsuit would bankrupt the company, along with the reputation damage, and fines.

https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-cut-pirated-millio...

It doesn't look like they care at all about the law though

The judge, Alsup J, ruled that this was lawful.

So they cared at least a bit, enough to spend a lot of money buying books. But they didn't care enough not to acquire online libraries held apparently without proper licensing.

>Alsup wrote that Anthropic preferred to "steal" books to "avoid 'legal/practice/business slog,' as cofounder and CEO Dario Amodei put it."

Aside: using the term steal for copyright infringement is a particularly egregious misuse for a judge who should know that stealing requires denying others of the use of the stolen articles; something which copyright infringement via an online text repository simple could not do.

Not if you pay for it.

Not if you pay for it.

Today.

In six months, a "Terms of Service Update" e-mail will go out to an address that is not monitored by anyone.

This is just how things are these days. The track record of Google, and most of the rest of the industry, does not inspire confidence.

There's also zero chance they will risk paying customers by changing this policy.

I still have yet to replace a single application with an LLM, except for (ironically?) Google search.

I still use all the same applications as part of my dev work/stack as I did in the early 2020's. The only difference is occasionally using an LLM baked into to one of them but the reality is I don't do that much.

To clear everything up, we've put together a single doc that breaks down the Terms of Service and data policies for each account type, including an FAQ that covers the questions from this thread.

Here’s the link: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/main/docs/t...

Thanks again for pushing for clarity on this!

### 1. Is my code, including prompts and answers, used to train Google's models?

This depends entirely on the type of auth method you use.

- *Auth method 1:* Yes. When you use your personal Google account, the Gemini Code Assist Privacy Notice for Individuals applies. Under this notice, your *prompts, answers, and related code are collected* and may be used to improve Google's products, which includes model training.

### 2. What are "Usage Statistics" and what does the opt-out control?

The "Usage Statistics" setting is the single control for all optional data collection in the Gemini CLI. The data it collects depends on your account type:

- *Auth method 1:* When enabled, this setting allows Google to collect both anonymous telemetry (like commands run and performance metrics) and *your prompts and answers* for model improvement.

Does this mean that for a personal account, your data is always "collected", but the opt out may prevent your data from being used for training? Also, the question was about "code", but this addresses only addresses "prompts and answers". Is code covered under prompts? The first FAQ lists "*prompts, answers, and related code are collected*" as separate items so it's still not clear what happens to code and if there's a way to opt out from your code being used for model training IMO.

that's a read flag. That's a weasel word in my opinion. If we took Google to court, you can easily say "statistics" does not include user's code.

From an initial parse of your linked tos-privacy.md doc, it seems like the answer is "no" -- but that seems bonkers to me, so I hope I'm misreading or misunderstanding something!