Never for sensitive material

Never put this into it

Do not type, paste, upload, or dictate:

  • Witness names or survivor identities
  • Full testimony or interview transcripts
  • Case files or legal filings
  • Exact addresses or GPS coordinates
  • Phone numbers, national ID or passport numbers
  • Any photo or video that shows an identifiable face where that person's safety depends on staying hidden

This matters more for Gemini's free tiers than for most tools in this catalogue: Google's own terms for the free API and AI Studio say plainly not to submit sensitive, confidential, or personal information to them, and warn that people may read it. Turning off "Gemini Apps Activity" in the consumer app reduces, but does not eliminate, human review.

A safer tool to use instead

Gemini is Google’s AI assistant. It translates, drafts and answers research questions, and it sits inside Gmail, Docs and Sheets, which makes it the path of least resistance for an organisation already working in Google.

Three separate products carry the name Gemini, and that is the trap: the consumer chat app, the free API and AI Studio that technical staff reach for, and the paid or Workspace tiers. They do not treat what you type the same way, and nothing on screen tells you which one you are in.

If your organisation is a registered nonprofit, apply to Google Workspace for Nonprofits. It grants Gemini and under enterprise terms at no cost, which is the cheapest way out of the free-tier terms.

What happens to your data

Where this data goes

  • Google servers (multiple countries)

Trains on what you type?

Depends on the plan or account type.

How long it is kept

Google runs at least three different data-handling regimes under the "Gemini" name, and which one applies to you depends on which door you walked through.

  • The consumer Gemini app has a "Gemini Apps Activity" setting that, left on, lets human reviewers read some conversations to improve the product.
  • The free tier of the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, a separate product technical staff may use, is more explicit still: Google's own Additional Terms of Service state, verbatim, "Do not submit sensitive, confidential, or personal information to the Unpaid Services," and that human reviewers may read, annotate, and process API input and output on that tier.
  • Paid API usage and Google Workspace plans do not use content to improve products and do not route it to human reviewers for that purpose.

Eligible nonprofits can get the safer, enterprise-grade tier for free through Google Workspace for Nonprofits (see nonprofit program below). It is not necessary to pay for a personal plan to escape the free-tier training regime.

Account required

  • An email address

Getting it, and using it in Iraq

Access in Iraq

Works in Iraq
  • Paid plans typically need a card issued outside Iraq.

Iraq appears on Google's own published lists of supported countries for both the consumer Gemini web app and the Gemini API/AI Studio: the service itself is not geo-blocked. As with other major AI vendors, organisations in the region report that Iraqi-issued cards are often declined for paid Google subscriptions; this is a widely reported pattern, not a documented Google policy. The free tier and the nonprofit programme above need no card at all.

Language quality

No one has published a measurement for this.

  • Arabic (Modern Standard)

    No per-language accuracy figure for Arabic was found in Google's published Gemini model documentation checked for this entry, and no independent benchmark was run. Untested.

  • Iraqi Arabic

    No dialect-specific benchmark for Iraqi colloquial Arabic exists or was checked for this entry. Untested.

  • Kurdish (Sorani)

    No benchmark or vendor documentation on Kurdish Sorani performance was found or checked for this entry. Untested.

Sources

Last checked: 2026-08-31