The website which wants to sell your data to hundreds of "partners" pretends to be concerned about your privacy.

Senior security writer uses adb shell command he doesn't understand to do something to a package he doesn't know is or isn't on his phone.

Uh. OK.

Anyway.

I have 2 devices one on android 13 and one on grapheneos. Neither has Gemini.

To check for Gemini:

adb shell pm list packages bard

and since I don't know if it's a regular apk or not:

adb shell pm list packages --apex-only bard

To be super sure, I also checked using shell commands device_config list and getprop, and grep for strings including: gemini, bard, smart, ai, model, and personal(ize/ation)

eg adb shell device_config list | grep --color -i smart

If you're not running a degoogled ROM, you need to install one.

What if I haven't switched from Google Assistant to Gemini?

at the least disable the play stores, or services.