The changes reflect a broader industry shift. Rather than relying solely on data scraped from the web, companies are increasingly mining people's everyday interactions with digital services.
Google is expanding the data, including images, files and audio recordings, it collects through its search services, which can also be used to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models.
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The tech giant says it is gradually updating settings for Google Search services, which include Search, Maps, Shopping, Flights, Hotels, Translate and News, over the next few months.
Google Photos is explicitly excluded from this policy.
The change was introduced as an update to Google’s Search services privacy settings, which the company says users can opt out of.
The platform can now save data, including users’ search history, information from sites they visited through its services and generative AI responses. It can also include media that users upload, such as “images, files, and audio and video recordings”.
“Google also uses your history to 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,” the company wrote in its help documentation.
The changes reflect a broader industry shift toward seeking and using real-world data from people’s everyday interactions with digital services rather than solely data scraped from the web.
In terms of its competitors in the AI universe, OpenAI’s help document notes that data sharing is enabled by default for consumer accounts, but users can opt out, while Anthropic has an opt-in ask which allows Claude to access users’ chats and coding sessions to improve its systems unless users disable the setting.
Last year, Meta started using European users’ public social media posts “to help develop and improve AI”. The company has also faced scrutiny over the use of content captured by its AI-powered glasses.
The practice of using user activity to improve technology predates the generative AI boom.
Google’s reCAPTCHA, for example, was previously used not only to block spam but also to help digitise books and newspapers by asking users to identify words that computers struggled to read.
How to opt out
If you do not want Google to save your search data, you can change your preferences.
Users can disable “Search Services History” or “Save Media” separately from Search Services History in the settings. The Save Media setting covers files and media uploaded through Google Search services, including images, audio and video recordings.
Users can also choose how often saved data is automatically deleted, with options to remove it after three, 18 or 36 months.
