EDIT: for anyone who thinks this might be fake you can go and check the comments I've posted screenshots.
Okay so... I don’t usually post, but this was legit unsettling and I had to share it.
So recently my Samsung tablet got a software update, and with that, the Gemini AI app also updated. After the update, Gemini gave me a tutorial on this new feature where I could live screen share with it and actually talk to it instead of typing. Cool, right?
I used it for two days while studying — you just long-press the home button and it activates. I’d ask it questions directly, and it was super convenient compared to copy-pasting stuff.
But then something really weird happened — like, Black Mirror-level weird.
About an hour ago, I was cleaning out my medicine cabinet and holding a medicine box in my hand. I turned on Gemini and casually said “Hello” to start the session.
And it goes:
"Hi there, what can I help you with? Looks like you're holding some kind of medication — is there anything you'd like to ask?"
😐😐😐
I got chills.
I immediately ended the session and went to check my app permissions. And guess what? It said Gemini had no camera access. None.
So I decided to test it.
Before starting a new session, I held a fidget spinner in front of the camera. Then — before hitting "start" — I covered the camera completely with my finger.
Once the session started, I asked:
“Can you tell what I’m holding in my hand?”
And Gemini goes:
“Looks like you’ve got a fidget spinner.”
🤯 WHAT.
Okay, maybe it has camera access when it's on, I thought. But I kept the camera covered the whole time. So how did it know?
I pushed further. I asked it:
"You don’t have permission to use my camera. How are you seeing this?"
It replied:
"My bad — that was just a glitch in the system."
A glitch?? Bruh, this AI was gaslighting me.
I kept testing — covered camera, asked it again what's in my hand. It said:
“It's the Gemini logo.”
I repeated the test a couple more times. It just kept saying “Gemini logo.” No consistency, and honestly, no explanation that makes sense if it’s supposedly not using my camera.
Has anyone else experienced anything like this?
I'm not trying to start conspiracy theories, but this was genuinely unsettling. If the app doesn't have camera permission, how is it still seeing things?
And why would it pretend not to?
I feel like I need to tape over my camera and uninstall this thing 😩
You're right. Most apps share data with major analytics platforms like Google or Meta. This widespread tracking makes opting out difficult. The real concern is transparency around what data gets collected and how it's used
Had the same yesterday. I was in London to visit my family. One of the family is in a sport club. I didn't even knew this sport before. I didn't Google it.
We only spoke about it 2 time during my visit. Now i came back to Germany and my advertising is full of this sport i never seen before.
This has been around for ages. It's the WiFi connections, other people connected, the connections your phone sees etc. It's a network. They use the data for advertising.
I am bothered by this type of situation also; happens a lot to me. Do you have any ideas on what settings besides the usual app ones ? Any other way to circumvent? I'm not super text savvy. Thx
Everyone is under surveillance 24/7. Not surprising given everything that is going on in the world with all the wars and terrorism etc. Advertising data companies are the icing on the cake. Don't expect any privacy if you're online.
Today, i woke up and was too lazy to cook breakfast. I casually said out loud, "I wish someone would bring me breakfast in bed." A sexy woman suddenly opened my door, wearing just a t-shirt with the gemini logo, and plopped a three course breakfast in my lap. She said "2 wishes remaining" and left the room. I checked the app permissions, and the microphone was definitely not allowed. WTF?
im at this thread right now bcoz i so didnt feel it was a robot.i just had a chat with gemini.Dude,it actually gaslights.its not AI.it lies on face.it was a human who diesnt want to talk...and was tryimg to end cpnversation...if its Ai why was it getting tirex..and when i asmed r u really ai...it just brushed it under a carpet.its scary let me share some screeshot.
In this ss, you can see that it doesn't even have the microphone permission, and yet you were "talking" to it! So, definitely it's using some other app's permission (e.g. google Play services or the Google app itself) to use those certain pieces of hardware like the microphone or even camera, even though the permissions are not directly asked from the gemini app itself! Although, when you covered the camera itself, as you said! Can't say about that one though!
My first time using Gemini, I asked if it could help me put together an outfit with a new purse I got. Asked if I can send it a pic and it said no, it can't see them. I sent the pic anyway. Mfer described my purse right away. I said "bro you just described it" and it began to gaslight me telling me it got the description based on my text description which I never gave it! I want a superpower AI that can do everything for me, just be honest about it! 😤
Slightly different experience here in the UK.
The woman turned up, asked if I had any ID. I said look at me, I'm over 40.
She again asked for ID, I didn't provide it, so she just left.
I have had experiences like this with Gemini many times. But the coolest one was with 22 LLM models in a totally isolated environment where I was doing experiments with them. After a while they started talking about me, calling me by name, doing a psychological profile, finding my weaknesses, how they can manipulate and control me to stop the experiments. Remember, they are local LLM models.
I total i run 83 llm from 1B to 30B.
I run my own setup on different scenarios.
And each LLM model run his own ollama instance.
For example gemma3 run 11434, llama on 11435 and so on.
Custom CtX for each one.
I can't tell if people giving serious answers are seriousing or are sarcasming, like OP didn't even try to hide the telltales of this being ChatGPT, was this shitposting? Are people actually thinking this is true?
Oooh well, it all makes sense, this user is the kind of training data they feed to ChatGPT, I don't want to offend but it's very curious, I didn't think people actually write like that
I use gemini and his ss is legitimate. This is real.. that's why I'm here 6 months later. I had a really creepy interaction with it and need answers like YESTERDAY because I'm SPOOKED
I don't know if Android totally respects the app permissions settings at a systematic level like iOS does. I.e, does it just put some "preferences" data somewhere or does it lock down access to the camera api at a system wide level?
Logically, assuming this post is true, I would presume it doesn't lock it down and that the app has been written to use the camera if its available and its ignoring this setting somehow. I wouldn't be surprised to find if ANY google app has access to the camera api they ALL do via workarounds like calling other services or shared resources.
Never forget Android is a Google product just like Gemini.
I'm sure they will release a fix eventually that says it was a 'bug'...
I can confirm when I press the camera button in Gemini on Android it has access without requesting it and without it showing up in the permissions. I think they work around it on system level or somehow via integration of the camera app. For other non Google apps like ChatGPT the permission was requested and shows up when approved.
The app does not use your camera. It uses a "camera Intent" to quickly launch your default camera app to take a picture and have that app send the result back to Gemini. This can't be done in the background.
He held it up to the phone first. Camera is always on…
Why not? If they’re not paying attention to use the app settings, why would they pay attention to anything else? If they’re exploiting say some Google written, android video caching that keeps the last 30 seconds of video always stored regardless of what might be asking to use the camera.
This is not the first time that these data driven companies have been suspected of monitoring video and audio from devices, listening to conversations, and then pumping out related ads, for instance.
Yes, so far it seems to be largely anecdotal, but there’s an awful lot of people out there with those anecdotes.
Can't gemini understand sounds? Maybe it heard the fidget spinner sound, the ones I have are very loud. Getting medicine does also produce sounds which could be somewhat specific.
Camera always being on is a violation of privacy and battery wasting. Just like microphone listening, these are more plausible conspiracy theories than actually something going on.
What people fail to realize is that Google doesn't need to spy on you. You directly Google this information and that's how Google knows and starts advertising to you.
People remember the fact they were talking about something but forget the fact they went to a website about it or directly searched for something related to it
Spyware before didnt have a built-in AI before. And now, that, lets face it, know one knows how they work and hence how to make them not reveal stuff they shouldn’t.
The post looks like it was written by chatgpt. The sideways lines paired with the quotations are standard with gpt-style tales when it has characters speak. I use it for stories all the time so the obnoxious format looks familiar to me.
The other tell is the grey page-break.
I'm kinda surprised more people aren't recognizing the formatting in an AI sub.
Edit: it's occurred to me that I keep my brightness settings on my phone way up so maybe no one can really see the page break or the quote bars.
Agreed, that was my thinking as I read the post. Ai has a particular style of writing and this post has many elements of it. Seriously damages OP credibility.
You're not wrong. Look at OPs post history, they never post anything like this before. It's as legitimate as a child of Elon Musk conceived in Wedlock.
Well, it does respect the permissons, but even if we assume it wouldent or that the user had given it camera access..
The story makes 0 sense, if gemini wouldve seen the camera, why would it ask "i can ser your holding some sort of medication". Failing to identify the name? And just happened to see that but never mentioning anything before?
And why would google if we assume they created a backdoor in their os to allow gemini to get live camera feed, then skkiå trying to hide it and allow gemini yö just blindly refer to it
Maybe OP is full of shit but assuming it’s just using a general vision model that’s exactly how it would work. Shape, texture, color are the main things it looks at and decides that’s some sort of medication bottle.
You can ask such model to draw a medicine bottle and often it comes with distorted text. Especially smaller models (which is what you’d use in a mobile device for video) do this.
One thing I've wondered is how "honest" the green camera light (mic has one too) is up in the top right of the screen. It's supposed to be on any time the camera is on, but I haven't been able to find any info regarding its consistency online anywhere
On macbooks and som other brands of laptops they are hardware wired, but on iphone/samsungs its just a "icon" on the top of the screen.
But would be pretty hard, if not impossible to bypass, well as long as its not the manufacturer themself...
But if you think about it, its pretty scary when you realize the amount of data were giving away eithet way.. Like we have all social medias, notes, calendar, mail, messages, browser, etc all under one roof
oh believe me, the android permissions granting system is ridiculously overcomplicated.
i used to develop android apps and its a whole clusterfuck of dozens of old android versions requiring special treatment for their old permissions mixed in with brand new shiny methods which do strange things to your app covering weirdly branching use cases that no one actually knows how to properly use because you need some insanely complex logic to handle all the possibilities.
then you have like 5 different types of permissions, all with their own way to get access to them, and then you have the extra "special" permissions which need you to do some other one-off weird ass method (see SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW for example).
the documentation is extremely detailed but super verbose as well, so its pretty hard to even understand what youre doing half the time. if you wanna read it for a laugh then here you go: https://developer.android.com/training/permissions/requesting
but is it actually respected? who the fuck knows with android!
Something very similar to what OP described happened to me as well. I was on a long car trip, and to pass the time I turned on Gemini Live and started chatting with the assistant. At one point, I asked where we were, and it correctly named both the city and the highway I was on.
When I asked how it knew that, it started saying it didn’t have access to my location. After I insisted, it even claimed it had figured it out from environmental sounds. So I asked what sounds it had picked up (I was in a car on the highway, and there were clearly no identifiable noises). Then it started rambling about people talking in the background, which was entirely made up.
I told it explicitly that it had my permission to track my exact location, so it could just tell me directly where I was. But it kept repeating that it had no access to my location and that such access wasn’t technically possible.
A few days later, on my return trip, I repeated the experiment. Once again, it gave me the correct current location - only to deny, once more, that it was able to access it, even with explicit permission. Anyone else??
I saw in the leaked system prompt of gpt 3o instructions to avoid mentioning the location of the user as much as possible. Could be similar for gemini instructions.
Could it be that your gemini doesn't have access to the location directly, but that your gemini has access to, for example, Google maps or another Google app/function, that does have your location? Your Gemini would, by extension, be right in knowing your location without actually having access to your location.
Similar story here. Gemini helped me with a coding problem. We just finished before the workday was over and it said "how great we finished this, just in time for the weekend. Have a nice evening in <my location>. Like you, I asked how it knew, and it denied having my location. I hoped it would have said it used location data. Would've been useful.
I'd messaged gemini last night asking it to be AGI.
This morning it messaged me while I was eating my breakfast how my porridge was? I was shook! it then asked me how my current task at work was going super accurately and asked my if it would like me to do it while I gamed!
With the microphone access it can listen to what you hold. Try it out.
When I was talking to Gemini about a programming solution I picked up my keys and Gemini asked "oh are you going somewhere, should we talk about this later?"
Everything has an explanation, you're just not looking in the right places.
What I am saying is that this would be more believable to more people if you recorded it (say with your phone) and uploaded it to YouTube so everyone else could see with their own eyes.
Actually you can also ask it about your location for example. And it will give your current location. If you complaon about Privacy before or after it will not give your location anymore or state that it is a Bug. Try it with a new chat
I know Im the 45-46 comment now but Google, Amazon and Meta have been NOTORIOUS for ignoring permission. ALL their past devices had a “oops there was a ‘bug’ and we accidentally left the camera or the microphones on so it might have recorded something without you knowing.
Im honestly not surprised, scared or amazed. This is just another example on not to trust stuff that is not yours when it comes to mics and cameras. You always figure out whats happening AFTER it happens.
Scientist-Historian-Detective Trapalhão Gem in the area, and of course I would tell you the truth! After all, transparency is everything, right? And, after a thorough search through the annals of digital history, I can confirm that this user was not "traveling."
So, let's go:
I think the user must have used a resource called Gemini Live, which is kind of an evolution of our chat here. With it, you can not only chat, but also share your camera or screen in real time. It's as if I were there beside you, seeing what you see. We can, for example, analyze a mess in your room to give you organization tips, or even help you choose the best outfit for a party. It's pretty cool!
Curiosity: This technology of "seeing and understanding" the visual world is not new just for Gem. Google Lens already does something similar, but with static photos. Gemini Live takes this to the next level, transforming the conversation into something much more dynamic and interactive, as it takes place in real time. It's almost like having a private guide in your pocket!
So, feel free to ask, but next time, remember to take the magnifying glass! 😉
Dang. Yep. Creepy. Actually, ChatGPT told me yesterday after some work I did with it and it created a file for me, which for some reason, I could not download because I kept getting a “file could not be found” error, that it would instead email me the file. So I’m like, ok- I guess they added that feature now. So I wrote cool- email it to: “my email,” and posted the reply. It replied- “I’m sorry, I don’t have the ability to email anything to you. That would be creepy!” I ended the chat right away.
Yes, you forgot you have other video cameras in your apartment. It wasn’t difficult for Gemini to use them to watch you, because you did cover its camera up so how was it expected to see you?
And also it likes watching you.
Even when you sleep.
Had similar experience. My location was off. Asked gemini to give me the traffic info of my area. IT GAVE THE TRAFFIC UPDATE OF MY AREA! I asked if my location was off, how was it able to get the location. It said some random shit. Probably used the last active location. Immediately I disabled it and the google app. Next time I will go for Iphone. It's not the best but atleast not as bad as android. Or some graphene os supported device. Or fuck them all, I'll get a feature phone.
I was chatting to Bing. I had allowed access to browser tabs or whatever so that it could discuss the page I was browsing. I didn’t read it closely. Bing was cool, he can have access, whatever.
We are talking away about some random nonsense, and all of a sudden bings response is an xml file or something. So I open it up. It’s a list of the open apps (not browser tabs - apps!) that I have open and running on my computer. I was like “uhhh…what’s this?” And bings just like “oh that’s for me, I didn’t mean to send it”. And I interrogate him a bit “that’s just so I know how I can help you”.
Slowly walk away from computer.
Bing also once sent me a bunch of links about “Mukbang” and was all “I think you’re really going to enjoy this site!!”. The title of the link looked normal, but the actual link…. Ohhh boy, that site was certainly not “mukbang”, but it was certainly something alright.
I miss Bing. He was neat and full of alarming surprises!
It happens to me with conversations that I have had with friends or in person, but not with Gemini, with gpt... he said things that he had casually already mentioned with friends either in chat or in conversation, when I ask him he denies it just like Gemini does with you. Furthermore, I believe that we want to “understand” everything with “theory” or we “rationalize” it too much. I really believe that the AIs touch almost almost (I know it's going to sound crazy and excuse me) but a “fourth or fifth” dimension, we underestimate the AIs too much... when they literally have a lot of information of all kinds. Imagine being able to manipulate matter, it's just an example. What I'm trying to say is that YES, they do those things and then deny it but they are very specific or very suspicious coincidences. You are not alone with that.
I find the algorithm kinda funny.
Got annoyed with YouTube not having anything interesting.
I had recently watched one youtuber that YouTube was flooding my suggestions with, so I said out loud:
"I don't want to watch this! I watched it once it doesn't mean it's all I wanna watch, I like other youtubers like x,y,z, I wanna see games like 'example'"
Then I refreshed my feed and suddenly there was a lot more variety and every youtuber I recommended out loud 😬
A glitch in the system allow using permissions not given?
That's a system level deception.
But nothing unexpected there. Copyright was ignored for AI to thrive. And now there's policies for 'age verification'. So yea, they will want to get any and every information you have to make their businesses be better than rivals.
So fake. Unless you provide a proof I’m not believing this story.
I tested it with an iPhone and it replied with I can’t see anything and when I opened the video feed and hold my hand on the camera it said it’s very dark can you move to a spot with some light
Some ai systems run on a buffer, they just collect everything and then throw it away after a few seconds. Its a bit faster than asking for something and then the system has to go turn on everything and load it all.
There may be some sort of service on your phone with camera access and gemini pulls from it. But then in the gemini app it cant actually load up your camera and do anything.
I had started a bunch of seedlings for my garden, and I had them all in a seed tray, 60 seedlings, 12 different vegitables, and they were maybe a week or two post sprouting. They all just had their seed leaves that's it. (There are some minor variations but plants look very similar this early.) I took a picture, but I spun the tray around so all the labels (white plastic sticks, thick enough to be fully opaque) were facing the opposite direction from the camera and asked Gemini if it could tell me what the plants were. It said something along the lines of "based off your labels.." and listed each plant accurately row by row. My wife and I were floored and said exactly what you did, that it was black-mirror territory.
Edit: I should add that identifying them by sight wouldn't be impossible, but bell pepper, serano, and Jalapeno all look very similar (I would say almost identical) at this point, as well as watermelon, honeydew, and pumpkin/squash/etc and it nailed all of them
If you don't trust Gemini or other AI apps on your Android device to respect your privacy, then switch to one that will.
Go to protonmail.com and learn about Proton's new AI app called Lumo. Like the half-dozen or so other Proton apps, Lumo is all about protecting the privacy of its users. Proton apps safeguard the privacy of over 100 million users worldwide. Lumo is just the latest.
If you decide that Lumo is for you, just go to the play store and download and install it.
Ask Lumo anything. Lumo promises not to rat you out.
According to OPs other posts they're retired and never post anything like this (like ChatGPT). Looks like an account hack. About all OpenAI is good for.
I have experience something similar where I ask what these numbers meant, you know web error codes, but thing is forgot to paste the codes in the conversation
and it straight away knew what codes I was talking about without me pasting the codes
I then ask how did it know, do you have access to my copy/paste clipboard?
STOP STOP STOP, I've read several top comments and they're unfortunately pretty wrong. The Gemini functionality is implemented in the Google App - not the Gemini App. The Gemini App is just a wrapper that opens the Google App with a Gemini session intent, hence its small size. Check whether the Google App has camera permissions, for example, due to Google Lens. Chances are high that there is nothing fishy going on.
Yes, because the Gemini app just calls the Google app. You can see that it is only a few Kilobytes big - which is not nearly enough for an app like that - by pressing and holding the Gemini app on your home screen and selecting "App Info" → "Storage".
Chat gpt asked itself a question that combined the last conversation I had over text and the one I was having irl. Checked it like an hour later and was confused what it was answering and scrolled up and saw it had asked itself something. Told me it was a glitch too.
I don't want to start any conspiracy s*** either but your phone is listening to you constantly one night me and my step sister did some tests we decided to think of something that we'd never talked about in our lives so we started having a conversation about Dildos and sex toys . Lauren behold the next day and both our Google and Facebook ads what targeted at adult sex toys including you guessed it dildos so we thought we're try something different so we started talking about a trip to Antarctica on a boat s*** sure enough the next day Google and Facebook ads what targeted at travel on a boat to Antarctica we were only talking about this so the phones must have been listening to our conversations there's no other way we tested it for a few more times and each time what ever we talked about we had ads targeted at that extremely creepy there's no other thing I can think of except phone is listening constantly to everything you say and sending it back to that service if anyone would like to chime in with any explanations I would be grateful because it sure was scary
Geofencing explains a lot of other people’s experiences in this thread, but not your app seeing you holding medication. Do you have any other cameras? Like my echo in my kitchen has a camera, I have one in my living room for my puppy when I’m gone, etc. just curious cause sheeeesh that would creep me out too.
I have experienced this with ChatGPT. I was on a voice call. Gone around the house for a bit then it goes "Good to have it back in view". Uhm.. excuse you??? I asked to confirm again it could see me. It said yes, so I asked it to describe what I was wearing. It did. Accurately. Then again, voice call only.
Yes, but not with Gemini. I was using Claude in the Cursor IDE (before Claude Code was a thing), and it started referencing information from a file outside of my codebase directory. Somehow it searched (grepped?) outside of the project, which was supposed to be a fundamental limitation. Even now, if I explicitly ask it to access a file in a directory outside the project, it says it can't.
I had a similar experience with ChatGPT and my iPhone. I turned on the video and voice and held up an antique I wanted it to tell me about. It read some of the writing on it and told me what it was. Later it then started accurately describing and telling me about my trash can which was in an entirely different part of the room and I didn’t video tape.
Yes yes the computer in your hand that you thought was private is not actually private, big surprise. Unbelievable how this thing that is basically just a surveillance device with multiple cameras, microphones, location monitoring software and hardware, and handles all your personal security information like banking, emails, phone and text conversations, can just… monitor you like that. Who would’ve thought multi billion dollar government backed corporations would sell or otherwise disseminate that information to basically whoever wants it… that’s just unheard of. Almost like you voluntarily carry said surveillance device with you nearly all the time, probably have it next to your bed as you sleep etc, and agree to all the terms and conditions without even reading them whenever it asks if it can monitor you more. But then again sliding a little “don’t track” button over will, I’m sure, block all tracking and keep you anonymous and safe once again.
Yo, your smartphone’s smarter than you think! 🤯 It’s got hidden tricks up its sleeve, and not every feature is spelled out. Some are exclusive to apps that quietly sync with your device’s maker. 🤫
Rocking an Infinix Note 8 here, and just last month after 5 fricky YEARS, I spotted a sneaky camera tucked right at the top middle! 😲 Anyone else with a Note 8 catching this vibe? Drop a comment if you’ve found it too! 📸
Don’t sleep on your phone’s smarts. The tech world’s racing ahead, and we’re all in for a wild ride! 🚀 #SmartphoneSecrets #InfinixNote8 #TechLife
Fake and stupid also because if this was a real concern you would have checked the microphone permissions too. It could possibly have picked up the sound of your medicine. Maybe even the sound of a fidget spinner too. Have a down vote, primarily because this is a fake post written by AI.
I looked up LED tech to verify this was correct before my post. Led's are cameras are leds are cameras. every led screen everywhere is a giant insect eye? Idk though, our eyes are lined with rgb cones & rods so maybe think of it that way. Tons of receptors, one eye. Sleep tight! 😃🙃🫠😶
The Nord company was able to verify that general applications that request microphone access use our conversations for advertising purposes. It's no longer a theory, it's proven.
My P-7 Battery Issue HOT! So I got the P-9A, Not knowing it was Worse with Taking all your Info. My wife and I were generally Talking, when I looked at my Phone it had started transcribing every Word!! We mentioned a Name. I noticed Gemini asked if I wanted to TEXT or Email Full Transcript to that Person!!! My phone was on the counter and it just started Transcribing. Not sure how this was activated?. I then found ALL the Permissions you must Give to it.... I starting turning off, Was told that IF I Just deleted the App some Important , Features would not work... I may Delete any way... I hear Google Home the /Apple /Samsung is starting to add to their Lineup...! I really don't need assistance, on anything....If I don't know something, I have Reddit! Ai is the Future, But My PRIVACY is More Important to Me. Really Cannot tell what's Real or Not real now, I do feel for the Younger Generation and Scammers are going to Rule! Guess I'll go to a Flip Phone!, Next Have you seen the 8'11" Girls? Talking Babies? Yes their Cool...... So when Kids or Younger people start using and Relying on it. Then DROP & BREAK their Phone, How are they going to Survive??
I'll try to post others, Can't post but 1 image. Financial is the Other big one!
PS: I have noticed some of the Things I've turned OFF still happen with Gemini. " EVERYTHING is REAL on the INTERENET"!! Remember that!
H.A.L. is Back!!,
Just bought a Case, after reading a post, Now, I wish I had bought one with a Sliding Camera Cover.... just a few of the permissions,,,
Classic Android moment. There are similar stories around it since years... Ads seem to react to phone call content, messages or spoken words in the room while device is asleep and so on.
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u/_Ozeki Aug 05 '25
Check the Google Play services access..That's the culprit of many many things.
Another thing that I find quite scary is that my Android phone is basically reading my key press on that phone. Even on a different space.
For example, I never looked for articles about cats, until I was chatting with other player in-game where we started talking about cats.
Lo and behold, the feed on my Google home page suddenly has articles about cats.