This Google Photos Feature Trains AI On Your Personal Photos - Here's How To Avoid It

Google is increasingly integrating AI features into its services, including Android. These integrations are mainly empowered by Gemini, which is taking over many aspects of the company's ecosystem. If you're a Chrome user, for example, Google silently installed a 4GB AI model on your device for Gemini Nano. If you use Google Photos, you'll want to listen up. Google has also been adding AI features there, with the normal content search replaced by a Gemini-powered version called Ask Photos. It relies on AI to find more relevant images for queries, like when you search for "cars," it will find all library photos featuring cars. It might be useful, but it also means AI is scanning your personal library. That's not the only AI feature in Google Photos, either. AI options are also included in photo editing. 

If you don't want the AI features, you can disable them. In the Google Photos app on mobile, tap your profile icon in the top right and go to Photos settings > Preferences > AI Features by Labs or, if you have it, Gemini features in photos. In those sub-menus, disable the features you don't want by turning off the related toggles.

The Google Privacy Hub confirms that data in the Google Photos app is not used for ads and or used to train AI beyond Google Photos. The app does does rely on artificial intelligence to provide customized memories, edits, and creations. It also uses photo and video data, face group labels or names, and additional information about your Google Account.

An easy answer, or what seems to be, for most people is to stop using Google services altogether. That is a solution, yes, but when you have lots of photos stored on the service and you have a family using Android devices and Google services alongside you, that's not as simple. You'd have to back up all available photos and videos, which could be a huge amount of data if you've been using the cloud service for some time.

The good news is that there are some alternatives for Google Photos. Pre-installed first-party apps, such as Aves and Fossify, are options. If you need more robust photo editing, there are more than a few essential Android app options for photographers. You can't go wrong with Affinity, either, as users swear by the free Adobe Photoshop alternative.

A question is, does Google Photos keep your content forever, or not? If you haven't been using it, Google will only delete your photos after two years, and even then only if you're past your storage limits for your account.  So, if you decide to move away from Google Photos, you may want to spend the time and effort to delete your data.