Google Starts Scanning All Your Photos As New Update Goes Live

submitted by

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/04/20/google-starts-scanning-all-your-photos-as-new-update-goes-live/

Google wants its AI to see all the photos of “you and your loved ones.” Billions of users must now decide.

–

Kinda creepy. I was about to migrate to Immich, fortunately I’m not in the US, so I don’t get that update yet. It does seem like a lost battle, anyway :( Even if I migrate to a privacy-respecting FOSS solution, my friends, family, acquaintances and random people around me will not (well, some may). I will still be featured in their photos out of my control.

34
86
3

Log in to comment

Hot Top New Old
edited

In some respects I’m glad the US gets invasive updates before the UK, it means I get a longer warning, and this realm isn’t always protected by EU regulations. I haven’t used Photos for a while but I still need to warn others. One saving factor: even though the article never says it, this feature seems to be for backed-up media only, and not for on-device media.

 reply
10

Even if we migrate to something else and “delete” the photos from the cloud Google still has them, I’m sure they’re training with them either way. Why wouldn’t they when no AI companies ever seem to face any consequences?

I will start just using Immich from now on though

 reply
5

Even if I migrate to a privacy-respecting FOSS solution, my friends, family, acquaintances and random people around me will not (well, some may). I will still be featured in their photos out of my control.

Ayup. That is the infurating thing. I can be careful. But ppl around me are not. Of course you u/l your pictures to big-tech! Everybody does!

TBH, I wanted to volunteer on a local crew that maintains hiking trails. I didn’t… because they were all about taking endless pics and u/l it to their FB and maybe IG. So I avoided sth I wanted to do make my city better. But no way could I avoid their need to share everything with big tech.

 reply
2

TBH, I wanted to volunteer on a local crew that maintains hiking trails. I didn’t… because they were all about taking endless pics and u/l it to their FB and maybe IG. So I avoided sth I wanted to do make my city better. But no way could I avoid their need to share everything with big tech.

Its hard, and this is a common issue. I have to stop and ask what good am I doing by avoiding it? Usually it’s worth the price, because making the real world a better place out weighs most big tech issues.

At least that’s how intrt to evaluate things, while still minimizing my own footprint where possible.

 reply
2

Save your photos elsewhere, start replacing photo subjects with ballsacks and buttholes. Allow Google to train its ai like normal.

 reply
3

Comments in DeGoogle Yourself@lemmy.ml

The problem is that people don’t care. They know how much invasive Google’s services are, but they still keep using them due to the “convenience factor”.

 reply
26
edited

Man, I setup Immich for my whole family, a RAID6 of enterprise drives with about 10TB total available storage, and 1TB/user. I’ve got symmetrical 1Gbs fiber, too. Does anyone use it? No. The last get together I told them if anyone wanted help setting it up, I wouldn’t mind. And no takers really. I said it’s easy enough anymore with a 1TB SSD being <$100 it’d last a very long time they could back up too that, far more than Google allows… Nope…

It’s insane to me that nobody wants to change, but when these companies change on everyone, they just let it happen.

 reply
19
edited

It’s also that the existing software like the photo apps or pre installed sync apps doesn’t help either. Eg. In android it’s all automatically synced to Google drive etc. You really need to turn it all off, either later or during the first mobile setup. Those big companies make it difficult on purpose to switch to alternatives, while by default enabling their own vendor lock in software. Same for iOS. Same for MacOS and same for Microsoft Windows.

If we truly want to change the world, we need to fix the root cause. And make a better alternative to android and iOS..

 reply
7

People are habits animals and some people are more habits animals than others.

 reply
2

not even habit…they just do what they are told, or given. even if there’s zero change in their process l, they won’t change and will just keep tapping blind

 reply
1

You could tell people that they could get rid of google and their invasive strategies by following a link and they would be like: oof, no thank you.

But in reality it takes some work.

 reply
11

The thought of having to transfer gigabytes worth of photos and videos is legitimately daunting. That’s enough to stop most daily users, and Google is banking on that.

 reply
10
edited

I’m so fucking pissed about people having my pictures everywhere. It’s so frustrating that nobody cares. They’ve FA and now going to FO as soon as the governments destabilize enough for them to track down dissidents and punish political opponents. Everyone will be blackmailed and lick boots because Aunt Linda thought her texts to the neighbor about your secrets were private. In my country I hear they now want federal surveillance in cars starting in 2027. Not sure if it is true. If so, I’m done y’all.

 reply
2

How do we opt out besides deleting Google?

 reply
2

Comments in Privacy@programming.dev

Google’s been doing that for ages. The thing that finally got me to pull the trigger on GrapheneOS last year was my Pixel telling me I had “over 8GB of memes” on my phone and asked if I wanted to clean up my storage.

 reply
4

Billions of users must now decide.

…. To opt in.

Oooh, scary.

 reply
7

I mean, this could mean that someone with photos of you opts in and you have no say

 reply
8
edited

Newsflash: They’ve been doing this since day 1. If you use facial recognition and/or any of the advanced editing features, congratulations, your photos have been subject to AI acanning.

You’re welcome.

 reply
1

Comments in Fuck AI@lemmy.world

Your biological distinctiveness will be added to our own

 reply
17

That title and excerpt are really misleading. This isn’t some app update you install and suddenly Google is scanning all your photos like that Apple CSAM thing that backfired. You have to enable Gemini, then enable Personal Intelligence inside Gemini, and then enable Google Photos linking inside Personal Intelligence.

It’s still a dumb and creepy feature in search of a problem that doesn’t exist, but it’s behind three layers of opt-in.

 reply
62

Is it safe to assume it’s disabled if I’ve disabled all AI within workspace

 reply
18

That depends on how willing you are to take Google at face value.

 reply
7

For now. How long before Alphabet forces it down your throat?

 reply
6

Certainly feels like we’re on the precipice of being lost to a techno-dystopian timeline.

It’s been a long while in the making, but even so, it also feels like we’re sleepily walking right into it.

 reply
4

Just a reminder that self hosting is easy and fun.
https://immich.app

 reply
12

Fun maybe, easy not so much. I would say I have intermediate level knowledge but it was significant effort to setup a home server and then germinification to work reliably. I would still recommend it but would caveat it by said it’s a small challenge even just to setup locally. I would NOT recommend it for beginners trying to have remote access.

 reply
7

Do you use a VPN like Tailscale or is your server open to the web? Because I find Tailscale uncomfortable for services that run 24/7 like image syncing and opening my server to the web is neither easy nor fun

 reply
2

I don’t open anything with any personal or private data to the web, and I don’t trust tailscale when normal wireguard does me just fine and I don’t find having a vpn on all the time on my phone an issue.

 reply
1

I recommend Netbird over Tailscale. It has more features, is fully FOSS, and you can self-host it.

 reply
1

I’m using Docker on a Raspberry Pi with a couple of RAID 1 SSDs attached. I’m running a DNLA server, torrent client, Immich, Webdav server, Pihole, and DDNS updater. It’s all reverse proxied using Traefik. It just chunters away, doing it’s thing. If you are careful about the setup and keep on top of updates, it’s pretty secure.

It’s not for beginners, but Immich is multi-user, so one person can set it up for their whole family and friends to use, share photos etc.

 reply
1

Thanks for the insights! But as I thought, this setup is the opposite of easy, unfortunately.

 reply
4

It’s comparatively easy compared to what it used to take to do this sort of thing. You only need basic Linux skills to get a full photo sharing system going. Everything can be installed from repositories and there isn’t much setting up to do.

 reply
1
Insert image