Note » The photos you take and the words you say are now being saved by Google to train AI (how to turn off the tutorial/training).

Google announces that Lens images, Search Live recordings, voice search audio, and translation speech inputs will be unified under the new "Search Services History" setting, explicitly stating that this data will be used to improve their AI models.
(Background summary: Google Search undergoes its biggest transformation ever: repositioning Search as an AI-powered one-stop portal)
(Additional context: Privacy browser Brave is about to "build its own search engine," with CEO stating: "We want users to break free from Google's surveillance")

The product photo you scanned with Google Lens, the phrase you spoke into your phone when asking for directions, and the foreign language you spoke into Google Translate—all these interactions will soon be stored more explicitly and used to improve services, including AI models.

Google announced in an email sent to users on June 10 that images, audio, and videos generated during searches will be stored together under a new Search Services History setting.

This new setting will be separated from another new setting, "Personalized Recommendations," which will be moved out of the existing "Web & App Activity" option in the coming months, allowing users to manage them separately. Before this split, all media related to search interactions were lumped into a single toggle, with no individual control; after splitting, users will have more granular control over the data types.

What will be stored

According to Google's official explanation, the media content included in Search Services History covers four categories:

• Images you upload when using Google Lens for visual search (Lens recognizes objects, scenes, or text in photos and directly returns search results; it is Google’s most actively promoted visual search entry point);
• Recordings from Search Live, the real-time search tool (Search Live, simply put, is the feature where you point your camera at the real world, and Google recognizes and answers questions instantly);
• Audio from general voice searches;
• Voice inputs spoken to Google Translate.

These four types of media share a common trait: they are multimodal data. Currently, AI labs are competing to enhance the ability of models to see, hear, and understand the real world—an effort that relies heavily on large amounts of real user visual and voice interactions as training data. Google, with billions of daily search behaviors, possesses a scale and diversity of data that is difficult for competitors to replicate.

While these records have been collected in the past, Google is now explicitly categorizing "media" as a separate class for the first time. The official terms explain that Google will use this data "to provide, develop, and improve its services," including its AI models.

The scope of the new setting isn't limited to Google Search; it also covers Maps, Shopping, Hotels, Flights, Translate, News, and all other search services. In other words, any voice or visual interaction within Google's app ecosystem is theoretically included under this new collection framework.

It’s worth noting that if "Personalized Recommendations" is enabled, this data will also be used for personalized suggestions and ad targeting. Both AI training data and ad personalization will draw from the same set of your perceptual records. For example, a voice query asking for directions could serve as an acoustic training sample for the model and also help the ad system infer your location and needs.

How to turn it off? Save Media is the key toggle

If you don’t want Google to store these media interactions, follow these steps:

2. Go to "My Google Activity"
3. Click on Search Services History
4. Turn off the Save Media option. Essentially, this toggle controls whether Google can retain your images, recordings, and videos. Turning it off means Google will no longer store these media interactions.

This setting is expected to be rolled out gradually over the next few months; not all accounts will see it immediately. When it becomes available, Google promises to notify users and retain existing preferences.

Data is the fuel for AI, and no one denies that. But the source of that fuel—every ordinary user searching directions, taking photos, asking questions—deserves reflection before clicking "Continue."