Chrome Can Now Pull Details From Your Gmail to Fill Out Web Forms
In brief
- Google began rolling out Chrome's enhanced autofill on Oct. 28, letting Gemini search a user's Gmail for order numbers, tracking information and flight bookings to fill web forms.
- The feature is available to U.S. users of Gemini in Chrome who have Personal Intelligence turned on, on desktop, Android and iOS.
- Google says sensitive data is encrypted and users can manage the feature in Chrome settings; its announcement does not list credit cards or addresses as data pulled from Gmail.
Google’s Chrome browser can now pull personal details from your Gmail inbox to fill out online forms for you, the company said in its announcement on Wednesday.
The update, called “enhanced autofill,” suggests order numbers, tracking information, and flight bookings when a form asks for them, wrote Amanda Lim, a Chrome product manager, in the announcement. Autofill is the browser tool that types in details like your name and address so you don’t have to.
It runs on Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, through a feature called Personal Intelligence, which lets Gemini draw on connected apps such as Gmail and Google Photos to tailor its answers to your own life. It is rolling out to Gemini in Chrome users who have Personal Intelligence turned on, on desktop, Android and iOS, starting in the U.S.
Google’s post names only those three kinds of data as coming from Gmail. Credit card numbers and addresses are part of Chrome’s standard autofill, which fills them from details you have saved in the browser, and the announcement does not say the new feature pulls them out of your inbox.
“You can manage whether enhanced autofill is enabled and what it can access via your Chrome settings,” Lim wrote. “As always, sensitive data is encrypted and you remain in control.”
Encryption scrambles data so only Google and other authorized parties can read it, though the post does not explain how that applies to the Gmail content Chrome reads or what it scans.
→“Built with privacy in mind, Gemini and AI Mode don’t train directly on your Gmail inbox or Google Photos library,” Google said in March, when it began expanding Personal Intelligence to free U.S. users. AI Mode is Google’s AI-powered experience inside Search.
Users choose whether to connect their apps and can switch the connections off at any time, the post says, though Google does train on limited information, such as specific prompts and the model’s responses.
In November, users pushed back on a Smart Features setting that let Gemini analyze emails and calendars unless they opted out, and Google said it had not changed its underlying data-handling practices.
Google also revised its privacy policy effective Oct. 16, adding an exception to its pledge not to use Gmail, Drive, and Photos content for ads: personalized ads can draw on that data if users choose to make it available to other Google services that support them. Google says the content is not used for ad targeting by default and that advertisers do not get access to the contents of Gmail, Drive, or Photos.
Chrome has about 65% of the browser market, and in January Google gave paying U.S. subscribers an AI browsing agent called auto browse, which clicks through websites and fills out forms on a user’s behalf.
Chrome also dropped a line from its settings saying on-device AI, meaning models that run on your own computer rather than Google’s servers, works without sending data to Google servers. Google said the wording change did not reflect a change in how it handles on-device AI.
The rollout began Wednesday in the U.S. on desktop, Android and iOS, and Google’s announcement gives no date for other countries
