Researchers say Google AI Mode changes recommendations based on your emails — and it risks creating a giant confirmation-bias machine
Researchers found brands linked to Gmail activity appeared far more often in Google AI Mode results The effect was strongest for shopping searches like clothing, coffee machines and running shoes AI-powered search could reinforce existing habits instead of helping users discover new things We all know that AI is often so eager to help that it can feel like it’s simply reflecting whatever you think back at you in a way that feels sycophantic and artificial. We’ve written quite a few articles about how to stop chatbots like Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini from doing this, usually using some variation of the “be brutally honest” or “invert” prompt. Now it turns out that AI’s tendency to keep you inside an echo chamber may extend beyond chatting with a bot. Researchers claim that if you’ve got Google’s Personal Intelligence switched on, AI Mode could start feeding more brands from your Gmail activity back into your search results. Gmail has […]
