news.ycombinator.com• Sep 25, 2025• 1 min read
Ask HN: Is it likely AI training models could start training on personal files?I've been sorting through my content on Google recently. Backing up and moving off of Gmail and Google Drive was relatively simple, but Google Photos is a bit more daunting. The Google Takeout process has delivered me almost 500 2GB zip folders, with scrambled metadata in supplemental data files, which is going to take a while to sort through. It's my own fault for sticking with one platform for so long, and I got hooked during the "unlimited storage" days of early Google Pixel phones.The reason I've begun downloading and removing stored files is because I'm (maybe justifiably or not) concerned about the prospect of my personal photos being used to train AI models. The chance that some diffusion model might end up recreating a heavily biased image of my wife, family, friends, or myself, or referencing any of my files or documents and what that all may be used for (commercially or otherwise) concerns me.Google is the only place I've ever put my personal photos. I've never bothered with