Software engineer Vishnu Mohandas decided he would quit Google in more ways than one when he learned that the tech giant had briefly helped the US military develop AI to study drone footage. In 2020 he left his job working on Google Assistant and also stopped backing up all of his images to Google Photos. He feared that his content could be used to train AI systems, even if they weren’t specifically ones tied to the Pentagon project. “I don’t control any of the future outcomes that this will enable,” Mohandas thought. “So now, shouldn’t I be more responsible?”
The site (TheySeeYourPhotos) returns what Google Vision is able to decern from photos. You can test with any image you want or there are some sample images available.
If you’re technical at all, self host immich. or you and a few friends could get together and set up a pikapods for immich, it’s relatively cheap and I’ve heard great things about pikapods. I know storing photos shouldn’t require technical knowledge, but honestly unless someone you know and trust manages the service, it’s hard to know who can abuse your data. I migrated from google photos to immich myself and the app ecosystem (migration tools, mobile apps, web app) are great and provide much of what google photos provided.