The news: Google personalized Gemini even further by tapping into data from Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search to customize its responses.

The opt-in beta feature, called Personal Intelligence, has two core strengths—reasoning across complex sources and pulling specific information from content like emails or photos to answer questions, per Josh Woodward, Google’s VP of Google Labs, Gemini, & AI Studio.

What it means: AI services are racing to become hyper-personalized assistants that gather information from online activity to offer tailored, specific responses. Gemini’s main competitor in the US voice assistant race, Siri, is even leaning on it to support future AI-powered upgrades, marking how dominant Gemini is becoming.

To that end, personalization is shifting from segments to individuals—Gemini’s ability to reason across personal data and YouTube behavior means answers are tailored at a situational level, not just based on demographic or interest-based targeting.

Implications for marketers: As AI assistants become hyper-personalized decision layers, marketers must optimize for both users and for the AI systems interpreting people’s lives on their behalf. Brands with strong first-party relationships—like subscriptions or loyalty programs— will be better positioned to influence AI-facilitated decisions.

Implementing generative engine optimization (GEO) strategies—including full-sentence product descriptions and clear product metadata—could maximize the chances of appearing in these personalized AI responses by making brand information easier for assistants to index, contextualize, and confidently surface at the moment of decision.

However, Gemini’s deep integrations across the Google ecosystem reinforce its walled-garden advantage and make it harder for marketers to acquire customers without leaning into Google-owned platforms.

If assistants increasingly act as intermediaries, traditional click-based attribution may weaken, pushing marketers to rethink how they measure influence and brand impact.

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