Agentic AI spells the end of privacy

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Writing on technology in the early 2000s, the creepy thought occurred to me that we would eventually have a generation of users who didn’t even recognize the concept of privacy in the digital world. It was when cookies and website tracking were going mainstream. They started out innocently, because if a website didn’t find a way to remember you, even a shopping cart wouldn’t work.

You would have to keep starting over.Unfortunately, users were and still are relentlessly tracked wherever they go online, as they became commodities or numbers for a marketing target. Technology began to nibble away at users’ privacy. I didn’t realize then that this was only the beginning of the end.

As AI becomes woven into the fabric of our lives, it’s beginning to be like living in a goldfish bowl. Can we possibly hold on to our much cherished personal privacy in this new world?Questions on privacy and how it is that one’s phone magically knows what we talked about or searched, and the next minute begins popping up relevant ads, are still the most common that I get. If users are still baffled by being tracked, imagine the shock when agentic AI becomes embedded in the apps we use most.

To autonomously take on your tedious tasks, AI needs access and can hardly remain hands-off. Companies are well aware of the risks, but that hasn’t stopped the race to make agentic AI work and personalize your experiences.As of early 2026, Google has pushed Gemini beyond a mere side-panel assistant and into the very nervous system of our digital workspace. Through a new "Personal Intelligence" feature, the AI now connects the dots across Gmail, Photos, and Drive, effectively acting as an agent that can remember things like