Google Says Gemini Doesn't Train on Private Docs After Claims of Unreleased Game Content Leak

An indie developer has sparked a new privacy debate surrounding Google’s AI assistant. The unexpected discovery involves unreleased game content that had never been publicly announced. Google, however, says its AI was not trained using private Google Docs.

The claims come from Klub Kofta Studio, the solo developer behind Operation Octo. According to a Reddit post, a player casually asked Google’s AI Search questions about the game. While several responses missed the mark, others appeared surprisingly accurate.

An unreleased character name raised eyebrows

The biggest surprise came when Gemini reportedly identified “Vantage Tripod,” an unreleased character the developer says existed only inside a private Google Docs planning document.

Klub Kofta Studio says the name wasn’t stored in game files, uploaded to Steam, or publicly shared anywhere. The player also reportedly used Gemini through an incognito browser session.

The developer further claimed Gemini mentioned additional unreleased mechanics that only appeared in recent internal development notes.

Google says private Docs are not used for AI training

Google has rejected suggestions that Gemini trains on private Workspace files. In a statement shared with Polygon, the company said private Google Docs and Drive files are not scanned to train its foundational AI models.

Google explained Gemini only accesses Workspace files when users explicitly request it. The company also stressed that users control document sharing settings and that publicly shared files may still be indexed by search engines.

Here’s what exactly Google representative pointed out, per the news outlet:

• Google does not scan your private Workspace content (which includes Drive and Docs) to train our foundational AI models (including Gemini).
• Links to publicly shared docs may be indexed if someone posted them somewhere publicly, where they could be seen by search engine crawlers.
• Users are in full control over their sharing settings for Drive content (like Docs) — see this resource for detail on how to adjust them.
• More detail on how these privacy settings work can be found here.

That being said, there is still no confirmed explanation for how Gemini generated the unreleased information. Whether it resulted from another source, accidental exposure, or an unusual coincidence remains unclear.