Google flexes another AI advantage

“Google flexes another AI advantage” refers to a recent analysis arguing that Google’s new Gemini “Personal Intelligence” feature showcases a major structural edge: it already sits on top of an enormous amount of users’ personal data and controls key platforms like Android, Search, and smart glasses hardware.​

What the article is about

• The piece is a Computerworld column by Mike Elgan (15 January 2026) discussing a Gemini beta feature called Personal Intelligence that is rolling out publicly over the coming weeks.​

• It argues this feature highlights why Google is especially well positioned for AI assistants, particularly on future devices like smart glasses and XR headsets.​

What “Personal Intelligence” does

• Personal Intelligence lets Gemini, with your permission, read across your Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube history and Google Search data so it can answer questions using your own information rather than just the public web.​

• Permissions are granular (for example, you can grant access to YouTube but not Gmail), and Google says the data stays in existing encrypted storage; it is not copied to train models, and query-time retrieval is protected by Application Layer Transport Security.​

Why this is an “AI advantage”

• The column’s core claim is that Google’s biggest, often underrated, advantage is that billions of people already keep their personal lives in Google services, so Google “barely even needs to ask permission” compared with rivals starting from scratch.​

• When Personal Intelligence knows your car, location, repair history, documents in your photos, and past searches, it can give far more context‑aware, assistant‑like answers than a generic model that only sees a chat history.​

Hardware and platform angle

• The article notes Google is simultaneously pushing AI‑centric hardware: at least two smart‑glasses products expected this year, plus an Android XR operating system and partnerships like the Samsung “Galaxy XR/Project Moohan” headset.​

• Google’s DeepMind “Project Astra” aims for always‑on, multimodal, personalized wearables that continuously process video, audio, and location with Gemini, making use of both device sensors and the existing data graph.​

Privacy and competitive context

• Google emphasizes that Personal Intelligence is opt‑in and that personal data used for answers is not used to train the core models, but the article points out that user trust and perceptions of surveillance remain a key issue for all such deeply personalized AI.​

• Compared with Amazon (which inherited Bee’s AI glasses) or others with weaker consumer trust or less integrated data, the author argues Google and Apple are best placed to dominate AI glasses—Apple via user trust, Google via sheer volume and integration of user data plus a leading‑edge model in Gemini.​