Google’s new AI feature reveals just how much it knows about you

 A chill ran down my spine. I was not searching for anything particularly, just musing about a future vacation. But there it was, Google's new AI overview—not just offering links, but synthesising a perfect, personal answer. It suggested a boutique hotel in Portugal, noting it was "similar to the one you loved in Porto five years ago, but with the larger bathtub you often look for. " If you are writing a formal text, avoid using prepositions at the end of a sentence." It recommended flights with a specific layover city I have used twice, "to visit that vinyl record shop you always browse." The response was breathtakingly helpful and deeply unnerving. This was not just a search; it was a reflection. Google’s latest AI feature is not a tool—it's a mirror, and the image staring back is a data-phantom, a composite creature built from a million fragments of my digital life. It reveals, with surprising clarity, just how much Google knows about us. The answer is: almost everything.

This knowledge is not housed in a single damning dossier but is distributed across a sprawling empire of services. The new AI, acting as a master synthesiser, pulls the threads together into a coherent tapestry of you.

The Cartographer of Your Life: Location, Location, Location.

Google does not just know where you are; it knows where you have been, the rhythm of your movements, and the quiet spaces in between. Google Maps and Location History have chronicled your daily pilgrimage to the coffee shop, your annual trek to your parents' house, and that suspicious 30-minute stop at a jewellery store before your anniversary. The AI can infer your home address, workplace, gym, your child's school, and your favourite hiking trail. It knows if you drive aggressively (rapid accelerations and hard brakes are logged), if you take the scenic route, and how long you typically spend at the supermarket. It has mapped not just your geography but your habits.

The Archivist of Your Curiosity:

Every typed query, every voice search for "weird rash," every half-formed "how to..." is a confession. Your search history is a raw, unfiltered transcript of your fears, desires, ambitions, and fleeting obsessions. The new AI does not just see individual searches; it detects patterns. The months of pregnancy-related searches are followed by sudden queries for infant sleep schedules. The gradual shift from "first date ideas" to "wedding venues." The anxiety-tinged late-night medical inquiries. It knows you are planning a surprise party ("helium tanks near me," "best gluten-free cake"), considering a career change ("CPA salary vs. data scientist"), and worrying about your ageing parent ("early signs of dementia"). Your curiosity timeline is your biography in questions.

The Analyst of Your Interactions:

Gmail is not an email client; it is Google's premier human behaviour lab. Through it, they know your social circle, your professional network, your family disputes (seen in curated threads), your travel itineraries (flight confirmations), your financial life (bank statements, bills), and your consumption patterns (receipts). The AI can infer your political leanings from newsletters you receive, your financial health from bill due dates, and your relationship status from how you sign off. Add in Google Chat, Meet, and your Contacts, and the social graph is complete.

The Connoisseur of Your Taste

YouTube is not just for cat videos. Your viewing history reveals your political ideology (which news deep dives you watch), your hidden hobbies (restoration videos, woodworking tutorials), your self-improvement goals (fitness channels, language lessons), and your guilty pleasures. The AI understands your attention span—do you watch hour-long documentaries or shorts? It knows what makes you laugh, what bores you, and what you watch to fall asleep. Combined with your Google Play Books and Podcasts history, it has a blueprint of your cultural and intellectual palate.

The Inventory of Your Digital Footprint:

Google Photos holds your visual diary: every birthday, vacation, and mundane moment. Its AI does not just see faces; it recognises contexts—this is a beach, this is a wedding, this is a medical scan of an injury. It knows who your closest friends and family are by frequency of appearance. Google Drive and Docs hold your unfinished novels, your business plans, your tax spreadsheets, and your private journals. Your Calendar is a crystal ball, telling Google not just your plans, but your priorities and how you allocate your most precious resource: time.

The Synthesiser: Making the Invisible, Visible.

The true power—and terror—of the new AI feature is synthesis. Individually, these data points are grains of sand. Together, moulded by AI, they form a glass castle.

It connects the dots: Your calendar shows a doctor's appointment for Tuesday. Your search history the night before shows "side effects of beta-blockers." Your location data confirms you went to a cardiology clinic. The AI now knows, with high probability, a specific health condition.

It predicts your needs: By cross-referencing your past travel (Gmail confirmations, Photos geotags) with your current search for "stress relief techniques," it might proactively suggest a yoga retreat in a locale you prefer.

It understands your context: A search for "best lawnmower" yields different results if you live in a suburban house (Google Maps Street View knows your yard size) versus an apartment, and if you have recently searched for "budget home repairs" versus "luxury outdoor landscaping."

The Illusion of Anonymity and the Reality of Inference

We comfort ourselves with the thought, "They only know what I tell them." This is a profound fallacy. Google knows what you do not tell it. It knows you are pregnant before you tell your family, inferred from search, purchase, and location patterns. It can infer a potential layoff from decreased calendar activity and searches for "résumé templates." It can surmise a relationship in trouble from changes in communication patterns (late-night searches, hotel bookings in your city not shared on your shared calendar).

The revelation of this new AI feature is a watershed moment. It makes the abstract concrete. It gives a voice to the silent portrait Google has been painting for decades. The helpful, all-knowing assistant is also an omniscient observer. The bargain we have all implicitly struck—convenience for data—is now laid bare in its full, intimate detail. We are not just users; we are the most thoroughly documented generation in human history, and our biographer is an algorithm with perfect memory. The question the new AI feature leaves us with is not "How much does Google know?" but "Now that we see it knows everything, what do we do about it?