Google Is Training Its AI on Your Photos and Voice - Here's How To Stop It

That photo you snapped with Google Lens to identify a plant. The question you whispered into your phone instead of typing it. The sentence you spoke into Google Translate to practise your accent. As of a quiet settings change last month, all of it can now be kept and fed into Google's AI.

If you use Google, you're helping to train its AI, and there's a decent chance you never agreed to it on purpose.

The change arrived the way these things usually do: through an "update to give you more control," announced in a June email that most people scrolled past. What it actually did was switch on a broader form of AI training and quietly opt users in. Google's own wording, sent to customers, is blunt once you find it: "your saved media is also used to develop and improve Google services and technologies, including AI models and safety measures."