this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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349
Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live (www.forbes.com)
submitted 15 hours ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Google confirms its latest update can scan all your photos to “use actual images of you and your loved ones” in AI image generation. That means Gemini seeing who you know and what you do. You likely have tens or hundreds of thousands of photos. They’re all exposed if you update.

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[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

We’re talking Personal Intelligence, Google’s latest AI upgrade path which lets users opt-in to connecting Google apps to Gemini. Why search for a doctor’s appointment when Google has access to all your calendar events. Why search for a party invite when it reads all your emails. And why search for a specific photo of you and your loved ones to create an image, when it sees all your photos.

This is coming first to the U.S. before it rolls out everywhere else. Google assures that “bringing personal details into your images shouldn’t mean compromising on privacy, which is why our core commitments haven't changed. The Gemini app does not directly train its models on your private Google Photos library.”

But Google does say “we train on limited info, like specific prompts in Gemini and the model’s responses, to improve functionality over time.” That’s why “connecting your Google apps to Gemini remains an opt-in experience that you can adjust in your settings at any time.” It’s opt-in for a reason. Keep that in mind.

Well, I guess I'm safe for the moment.... But I also just checked and you can't prevent Google photos from accessing your files, so that's concerning....

[–] solrize@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It looks like I have Google Photos disabled in Settings. Maybe that helps.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

Good idea, just did the same. Seems I've leaked several photos throughout the years to Google photos. I can see them online. Probably nothing I can do about it now but I'll have to"delete" these rehab I get to a computer.