USAID executives suspect Gemini of spying and recording conversations through Google Workspace apps, — media

It is reported that the leaders of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have warned employees that Gemini can record their conversations through Google Workspace programs.

USAID, like many other companies and government agencies, uses Google Workspace, which, in addition to access to Gmail, Google Docs, and other tools, now includes Google’s AI assistant.

Gemini can create drafts of emails, answer questions, help with coding, and take notes from meetings (and thus record Google Meet calls). What’s important: the assistant is enabled by default in programs and will be activated all the time unless you turn it off in the settings.

With this update, according to IT Brew, USAID executives warned employees that their conversations could be monitored and recorded. After that, according to the publication, online meetings about work at the agency «became tense»bosses behaved «unreasonably and» according to the script during the calls, and few were willing to speak frankly.

Of course, all these actions smack a bit of paranoia, but given that the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk, has taken the agency’s vetting seriously, such concerns are understandable.

Google, meanwhile, denied USAID’s suspicions and noted that the contract with the organization was signed before Trump took office, and it did not issue any orders for espionage.

Earlier, Elon Musk, who currently heads the U.S. Department of Performance, claimed that the agency «it’s time to die»and also wrote a series of posts in X with reports that USAID «funded the development of biological weapons like COVID-19 with tax dollars of ordinary Americans». Meanwhile, Trump threatens to cut the agency’s staff from 10,000 to 300.