Google gives signed-in users a choice over whether their media is saved when they interact with Search services. As per a recent update to its settings called Search Services History, Google can now use this saved media includes images, files, audio, and video from interactions such as visual searches, image uploads, and voice queries, to improve its AI models.
Saved media may be used to improve your experience on Google services, such as letting you revisit past visual searches, and it may also be used to develop and improve Google’s AI models and technologies, as well as the Google services that use them. When media is saved, you can view it in your Search Services History. This tutorial walks through how to turn that saving off and how to clear any media that has already been stored.
Control whether Google saves your media to Search Services History
- Go to your Search Services History settings. Open a browser and sign into your Google account. Navigate to myactivity.google.com. From there, look for the Search Services History section. Make sure you are signed into the correct Google account before making any changes.
- Find the media saving control. Within Search Services History, locate the setting that controls whether Google saves media from your interactions with Search services. This covers images, files, audio, and video. By default, this is enabled for signed-in users.
- Turn off media saving. Toggle the media saving option off. A confirmation prompt may appear. Confirm the change. Once disabled, Google will no longer save new media from your Search service interactions to your history. This also removes the ability for that saved media to be used to develop and improve Google’s AI models going forward, since media that is not saved cannot be drawn on for that purpose.
- Delete any media already saved. Turning off the setting stops new media from being saved, but it does not automatically remove what is already stored. Return to your Search Services History and review any saved media. Delete items you want removed. You can delete individual items or clear the history in bulk depending on the options available in your account.
- Review your broader activity controls. Visit myactivity.google.com and check your Web and App Activity settings, including auto-delete options. Some media-linked activity may appear under broader activity categories in addition to Search Services History, so it is worth reviewing the full picture across your account.
How Google Search Services uses your private data
In case you don’t know, this is what Google’s help pages says on how your media is used to train its AI models:
Google uses AI models and other technologies to process your media and respond to you when you use features that rely on voice, audio, images, or files. This includes actions like when you search with your camera, ask a question by voice, or upload a document for translation.
Google also uses your saved media to develop and improve technologies that understand the world the way you do, like the AI models that power features like:
- AI Mode
- Lens
- Translate
- Search Live
- Voice and audio search
Google says that this content is retained for up to 4 years so they can use it to improve its AI models:
This helps us deliver safer and more accurate results and build better services for everyone. When saved media is used to train our AI models, it is disconnected from your Google Account and retained for up to 4 years.
However, a major concerning factor here is that your media can also be used for human review. This means that if you do not disable this feature, there will be someone who will be reviewing your private content, including photos, videos, files, and audio search queries, which will most likely have very personal information. Google says it has filters designed to remove private information, and will seek the user’s permission before human review is done.
We take your privacy seriously and take steps to protect it when using your Search Services History data to train our AI models. For example, data is disconnected from your Google Account before it is used to train our AI models or reviewed by our trained service providers. We will seek your permission before sharing your media with these providers for human review as part of the model improvement process. We use filters designed to automatically remove a broad range of identifying info or sensitive personal information. We are constantly working to improve our filtering and safety systems to better protect your privacy. When Search Services History or your Save Media subsetting are off, media from your future interactions won’t be used to train Google’s generative AI models, unless you provide feedback.
What this setting covers and what it does not
The media saving control specifically applies to images, files, audio, and video from your interactions with Search services while signed in. When saving is on, Google uses that media both to personalise your experience, such as letting you revisit a past visual search, and potentially to train and improve its AI models and the services that use them. Turning saving off removes both of those uses for any media generated after the change.
It is worth being clear about the limits. This setting covers Search Services History specifically. Other Google products, including Gemini, Google Photos, and Gmail, have their own separate data controls and their own relationships with AI training practices. Adjusting this one setting does not automatically apply across your entire Google account. If you want broader control, you will need to review the settings for each product individually.
A 2026 privacy study found that Google, alongside Meta and OpenAI, employs practices specifically designed to obstruct opt-out requests, including failing to link opt-out forms from privacy policies and requiring multiple separate form submissions to complete a single request. By contrast, Apple’s approach to AI foundation models explicitly avoids using private personal data for training and requires opt-in for aggregate data sharing. The steps above represent the controls currently available to manage what Google saves from your Search service interactions, and using them is the most direct way to limit how that media is stored and used.
