Show HN: Google Gemini Is Scanning Your Photos – and the EU Said No
Google has expanded its Personal Intelligence feature so that Gemini can now access your Google Photos face data, Gmail, YouTube history, and search activity to generate personalized AI images — live for US paid subscribers as of April 2026.
Sorry but it’s not really an opinion for you to contest it, it’s a well defined guideline of what makes a Show HN post vs a normal link share. If the OP wants to add commentary to their submission they could use “Tell HN” or simply point at the actual blog post and write a comment.
People are not concerned because it can, because as you say it needs to in order to operate if you opt in.
The concerns implied are that:
* You are automatically opted in, or you are nagged to opt-in in a manner that makes it easy to accidentally do so, as is not uncommon with these things.
* That the use of your data for training isn't just for you, it is also training any other models Google wishes to use it for.
* That once they have started, opting out does nothing: your data is already theirs. Not that wasn't already anyway, control of how your stuff is used is apparently a right reserved only for corporations.
Unless something changed I'm not aware of, you have to opt-in to Personal Intelligence for private data. It asked me about 10 times to turn it on, I said no each time, it's still not enabled.
The EU angle is interesting but the more immediate concern is the opt-in/opt-out framing. Google historically defaults these features to on and buries the toggle — did they actually make face data access opt-in from the start, or is this another "we'll notify you and assume consent" situation? The GDPR enforcement gap between announcement and actual compliance has been wide enough to drive a truck through.
Moved all my photos over to Ente recently, and I'm very happy to no longer be feeding all of that data into the Google machine. I'd highly recommend everyone else move their photos out as well (Immich is another good option).
Someone just handed me a smartphone today; the second thing I saw it say was something to the effect of "Gemini can look at your screen now (CoPilot outrage style)" and then I politely noped the fuck out of the building.
I expect that info to be completely sufficient to dox me; in the meantime, while waiting for the boys to arrive -- does anyone know how to make the camera in Waydroid not crash the entire stack? Or am I to understand that as yet another bloody rite of passage?
I already have this turned off. It's slow, but I use a browser extension to save my Gemini chats locally, when I want to keep them.
The concerns implied are that:
* You are automatically opted in, or you are nagged to opt-in in a manner that makes it easy to accidentally do so, as is not uncommon with these things.
* That the use of your data for training isn't just for you, it is also training any other models Google wishes to use it for.
* That once they have started, opting out does nothing: your data is already theirs. Not that wasn't already anyway, control of how your stuff is used is apparently a right reserved only for corporations.
Confidential compute is another option.
"Opt-in" is a lie when the user is harassed or tricked into "accepting".
I expect that info to be completely sufficient to dox me; in the meantime, while waiting for the boys to arrive -- does anyone know how to make the camera in Waydroid not crash the entire stack? Or am I to understand that as yet another bloody rite of passage?