Google is quietly broadening the scope of data it gathers through its Search services, a move that allows the company to feed user interactions — including images, files, and audio recordings — into its artificial intelligence training pipelines. The changes, rolling out over the coming months, affect services such as Search, Maps, Shopping, Flights, Hotels, Translate, and News. Notably, Google Photos remains excluded from this policy.
The update, detailed in Google’s privacy documentation, means the platform can now store users’ search history, information from sites accessed via its services, generative AI responses, and any media uploaded — including “images, files, and audio and video recordings.” The company states that this data helps “provide, develop, and improve its services (such as training generative AI models) and to protect Google, its users, and the public with the help of human reviewers.”
A Broader Industry Shift
This expansion is not an isolated move. Across the tech sector, companies are increasingly turning to real-world data from everyday digital interactions rather than relying solely on data scraped from the public web. OpenAI, for instance, enables data sharing by default for consumer accounts, though users can opt out. Anthropic takes a slightly different approach, requiring an opt-in for Claude to access chats and coding sessions, but users must disable the setting if they wish to prevent it.
Last year, Meta began using European users’ public social media posts to train its AI, a practice that has drawn scrutiny from regulators. The company has also faced questions over content captured by its AI-powered glasses. The trend predates the generative AI boom: Google’s reCAPTCHA, for example, once helped digitise books and newspapers by asking users to identify words that computers struggled to read.
For European users, the implications are significant. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) gives individuals strong rights over their data, but companies often rely on consent or legitimate interest as legal bases. Google’s updated settings allow users to opt out, but the default remains data collection — a point that privacy advocates in Brussels and Berlin have criticised.
How to Opt Out
Users who wish to prevent Google from saving their search data can adjust their preferences. In the settings, they can disable “Search Services History” or “Save Media” separately. The Save Media setting covers files and media uploaded through Google Search services, including images, audio, and video recordings. Additionally, users can choose how often saved data is automatically deleted, with options to remove it after three, 18, or 36 months.
This development comes as European regulators continue to scrutinise big tech’s data practices. The EU’s top court recently upheld a €4.1 billion fine against Google for antitrust violations related to Android, underscoring the bloc’s willingness to enforce competition and privacy rules. Meanwhile, the European Parliament has also been active on data governance, with debates over how to balance innovation with citizen protections.
For now, the onus remains on individual users to navigate these settings. As AI models become more embedded in everyday services, the question of who controls personal data — and how it is used — will only grow more pressing across the continent.
