AI photo merging and privacy: what actually happens to your uploads
Family photos are sensitive data. A straight answer about where uploads go, how long they stay, and what to check before you trust any tool with them.
When you upload a picture of your child to a website, you should know exactly what you've agreed to. Most tools bury this. Here's ours, and here's how to read anyone else's.
What we do
Your uploads are stored so your merge history works — so you can come back tomorrow and download something again. Every merge can be deleted from the workspace, and deleting it removes the source images with it. We don't sell images, we don't license them, and we don't feed them into model training.
What "we may use your content to improve our services" means
It usually means training. If a tool's terms contain that phrase without a carve-out for user content, assume your photos may end up shaping a model. That's a legitimate business model — it just isn't one you should sign up to accidentally with a picture of your family.
Four things to check in any image tool's terms
- Retention period. How long do uploads stay if you do nothing? "Indefinitely" is a real answer some tools give.
- Deletion. Is there a delete button, and does it remove sources or only outputs?
- Training carve-out. Look for an explicit "we do not use customer content to train models."
- Sub-processors. Every AI tool sends your image to a model provider. Which one, and under what terms? Ours goes to Google's Gemini image API, which does not train on API-submitted content.
Practical habits
Don't upload other people's photos if you wouldn't be comfortable telling them. Strip location metadata from phone photos before uploading anywhere — most tools don't need it and few will remove it for you. And if you're handling client work, check whether your contract lets you send those files to a third-party processor at all. That one catches a lot of freelancers out.