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Ask HN: Is it likely AI training models could start training on personal files?

3•sjw987•1h ago
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 anything public facing and trusted that a private cloud storage service would always stay private. So in my case, Google would be the sole place to leave to ensure data sovereignty.

Does anybody believe Google (and other companies) might soon start scanning personal files we hold on their storage facilities? Is that a legal possibility for them?

It seems to me that it's a huge pool of fresh training data that they would inevitably want to get their hands on. And given how much they have already trained on, it seems the next logical step from a business standpoint.

Clearly they would need to change their privacy policies and terms of agreements and inform users of these changes. Is it possible they could slip this sort of change in without much notice?

I was also wondering if anybody might have pointers for the best strategy to securely backup offline. I don't want to just shift my family photos from one company to another where business execs are training their own model. Anybody else handled this recently?

The Wind, a Pole, and the Dragon

https://entropicthoughts.com/the-wind-a-pole-and-the-dragon
1•todsacerdoti•1m ago•0 comments

DroidGuard: A Deep Dive into SafetyNet [pdf]

https://www.romainthomas.fr/publication/22-sstic-blackhat-droidguard-safetynet/whitepaper.pdf
1•SoKamil•1m ago•0 comments

The Theatre of Pull Requests and Code Review

https://meks.quest/blogs/the-theatre-of-pull-requests-and-code-review
1•todsacerdoti•4m ago•0 comments

Taiwan Suspends South Africa Chip Export Curbs After Two Days

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1•aspenmayer•5m ago•1 comments

Exploring Offshore VPS Hosting: Privacy, Freedom, and Control

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https://github.blog/security/supply-chain-security/our-plan-for-a-more-secure-npm-supply-chain/
1•DDerTyp•7m ago•0 comments

Polyform - Source code licenses with limited rights

https://polyformproject.org/licenses/
1•mthwl•9m ago•0 comments

Our Bodies, Their Data: Platform Capitalism and Exclusion of the Global South

https://countercurrents.org/2025/09/our-bodies-their-data-platform-capitalism-and-the-exclusion-o...
1•Gigamouse•9m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Software jobs with high barriers of entry?

1•Poomba•10m ago•0 comments

Home Office to UK cops: check your databases before asking for our passport pics

https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/25/uk_passport_photo_cache_block_rules/
1•rntn•11m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Non-career ending way to let agents touch internal structured data?

1•Hoshang07•11m ago•0 comments

What's a handy tool for creating/editing Lottie files, free/no watermark?

1•freitzzz•12m ago•0 comments

Crates.io: Malicious crates faster_log and async_println

https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/09/24/crates.io-malicious-crates-fasterlog-and-asyncprintln/
2•campuscodi•13m ago•0 comments

EU opens probe into possible anticompetitive practices by SAP

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2•aspenmayer•14m ago•1 comments

The Leader in Need or Animal in Charge

https://medium.com/@ersinesen/the-leader-in-need-or-animal-in-charge-170dc5d2d32e
1•ersinesen•18m ago•1 comments

AI is helping judges to quickly close cases, and lawyers to quickly open them

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1•Improvement•18m ago•0 comments

The Hacker Folk Art of Esoteric Coding

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-hacker-folk-art-of-esoteric-coding/
1•sohkamyung•20m ago•0 comments

Magma Displacement triggered Earthquakes around Santorini

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2•NKosmatos•23m ago•1 comments

Former Apple Luminary Sets Out to Create the Ultimate GPU Software

https://www.wired.com/story/semiconductor-software-startups-chips/
1•fork-bomber•34m ago•0 comments

Bundler Belongs to the Ruby Community

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3•ciconia•34m ago•0 comments

Let's Model the cost of a TikTok U.S. divestiture: $72.2B base case

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1•thealecpow•38m ago•1 comments

Apple pushes EU to repeal tech rules over feature delays, app vulnerabilities

https://www.reuters.com/business/apple-urges-eu-regulators-take-closer-look-tech-rules-2025-09-25/
2•doener•42m ago•0 comments

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I960, the first superscalar CPU (2023)

https://www.righto.com/2023/07/the-complex-history-of-intel-i960-risc.html
2•michalpleban•50m ago•0 comments

Using flexdashboard to create a GitHub Actions-powered YouTube feed

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1•sebg•53m ago•0 comments

Archaeologists Find Earliest Reference to Jesus as God Under a Prison

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1•thomassmith65•56m ago•1 comments

EBR Launches Advanced HR Software to Transform Workforce Management in Dubai

https://ebrsoftware.com/hr-and-payroll-software-dubai/
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Vidu Q2: Vidu Q2 solves AI video's biggest problem: character consistency

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Wan 2.5: Alibaba's Wan 2.5: First AI video model with native audio generation

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1•reabsorb•1h ago•0 comments