Coincidence or No Big Deal for the Google: User Data and Suicide
May 27, 2025
Just the dinobaby operating without Copilot or its ilk.
I have ignored most of the carnival noise about smart software. Google continues its bug spray approach to thwarting the equally publicity-crazed Microsoft and OpenAI. (Is Copilot useful? Is Sam Altman the heir to Steve Jobs?)
Two stories caught my attention. The first is almost routine. Armed with the Chrome Hoover, long-lived cookies, and the permission hungry Android play — The Verge published “Google Has a Big AI Advantage: It Already Knows Everything about You.” Sigh. another categorical affirmative: “Everything.” Is that accurate? “Everything” or is it just a scare tactic to draw readers? Old news.
But the sub title is more interesting; to wit:
Google is slowly giving Gemini more and more access to user data to ‘personalize’ your responses.
Slowly. Really? More access? More than what? And “your responses?” Whose?
The write up says:
As an example, Google says if you’re chatting with a friend about road trip advice, Gemini can search through your emails and files, allowing it to find hotel reservations and an itinerary you put together. It can then suggest a response that incorporates relevant information. That, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the keynote, may even help you “be a better friend.” It seems Google plans on bringing personal context outside Gemini, too, as its blog post announcing the feature says, “You can imagine how helpful personal context will be across Search, Gemini and more.” Google said in March that it will eventually let users connect their YouTube history and Photos library to Gemini, too.
No kidding. How does one know that Google has not been processing personal data for decades. There’s a patent *with a cute machine generated profile of Michael Jackson. This report generated by Google appeared in the 2007 patent application US2007/0198481:
The machine generated bubble gum card about Michael Jackson, including last known address, nicknames, and other details. See US2007/0198481 A1, “Automatic Object Reference Identification and Linking in a Browsable Fact Repository.”
The inventors Andrew W. Hogue (Ho Ho Kus, NJ) and Jonathan T. Betz (Summit, NJ) appear on the “final” version of their invention. The name of the patent was the same, but there was an important different between the patent application and the actual patent. The machine generated personal profile was replaced with a much less useful informative screen capture; to wit:
From Google Patent 7774328, granted in 2010 as “Browsable Fact Repository.”
Google wasn’t done “inventing” enhancements to its profile engine capable of outputting bubble gum cards for either authorized users or Google systems. Check out Extension US9760570 B2 “Finding and Disambiguating References to Entities on Web Pages.” The idea is that items like “aliases” and similarly opaque factoids can be made concrete for linking to cross correlated content objects.,
Thus, the “everything” assertion while a categorical affirmative reveals a certain innocence on the part of the Verge “real news” story.
Now what about the information in “Google, AI Firm Must Face Lawsuit Filed by a Mother over Suicide of Son, US Court Says.” The write up is from the trusted outfit Thomson Reuters (I know it is trusted because it says so on the Web page). The write up dated May 21, 2025, reports:
The lawsuit is one of the first in the U.S. against an AI company for allegedly failing to protect children from psychological harms. It alleges that the teenager killed himself after becoming obsessed with an AI-powered chatbot. A Character.AI spokesperson said the company will continue to fight the case and employs safety features on its platform to protect minors, including measures to prevent "conversations about self-harm." Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company strongly disagrees with the decision. Castaneda also said that Google and Character.AI are "entirely separate" and that Google "did not create, design, or manage Character.AI’s app or any component part of it."
Absent from the Reuters’ report and the allegedly accurate Google and semi-Google statements, the company takes steps to protect users, especially children. With The profiling and bubble gum card technology Google invented, does it seem prudent for Google to identify a child, cross correlate the child’s queries with the bubble gum card and dynamically [a] flag an issue, [b] alert a parent or guardian, [c] use the “everything” information to present suggestions for mental health support? I want to point out that if one searches for words on a stop list, the Dark Web search engine Ahmia.fi presents a page providing links to Clear Web resources to assist the person with counseling. Imagine: A Dark Web search engine performing a function specifically intended to help users.
Google, is Ahmia,fi more sophisticated that you and your quasi-Googles? Are the statements made about Google’s AI capabilities in line with reality? My hunch is requests like “Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the company strongly disagrees with the decision. Castaneda also said that Google and Character.AI are "entirely separate" and that Google "did not create, design, or manage Character.AI’s app or any component part of it." made after the presentation of evidence were not compelling. (Compelling is a popular word in some AI generated content. Yeah, compelling: A kid’s death. Inventions by Googlers specifically designed to profile a user, disambiguate disparate content objects, and make available a bubble gum card. Yeah, compelling.
I am optimistic that Google knowing “everything,” the death of a child, a Dark Web search engine that can intervene, and the semi-Google lawyers add up to comfort and support.
Yeah, compelling. Google’s been chugging along in the profiling vineyard since 2007. Let’s see that works out to longer than the 14 year old had been alive.
Compelling? Nah. Googley.
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2025
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