Proton claims Google trains AI on Google Photos albums: does it?

Google recently denied allegations that it was using Gmail user data to train AI. Now, Proton, a Switzerland-based privacy-centric competitor to the US tech giant, has publicly claimed that the company was doing the same with Google Photos.

Proton must have decided to intervene, sort of, after AI enthusiasts around the world began praising Google’s Nano Banana AI image generator. Almost as one, users are claiming the tool has successfully erased the line between reality and AI.

Hence, the post on X: “When you know the only reason Google’s AI is the best at generating images [is] because they’re scanning every Android user’s Google Photos albums but they won’t admit it, and you can’t prove it.”

When you know the only reason Google's AI is the best at generating images because they're scanning every Android user's Google Photos albums but they won't admit it & you can't prove it pic.twitter.com/c5oF44R5u2

undefined Proton Drive (@ProtonDrive) December 23, 2025

Proton Drive’s X account posted this next to a screenshot of Google’s blog post from May 2025, which celebrated the fact that Google Photos was a decade old.

No evidence for the claim has been provided by the Swiss company, and Google isn’t reacting either.

But on its Google Photos Help page, the company says: “We don’t train any generative AI models outside of Photos with your personal data, which includes other Gemini models and products.”

“If you choose to share a photo or video from Google Photos with other Google or third-party services, your data is processed according to those other services’ policies,” the tech giant also explains.

Still, Google Photos is not an end-to-end encrypted platform, and Google indeed does scan photos for Child Sexual Abuse Material “with trained specialist teams and automated technology.”

Using the photos to train an AI image generator is, of course, very different, but the fact is that platforms such as Google Photos do analyze your images anyway. Only end-to-end encryption can stop it.

Nine years ago, Proton claimed that Google nearly killed Proton Mail by hiding the service from search results for queries such as “secure email” and “encrypted email.”

Having said that, it’s probably important to note that Proton has serious beef with Google (and surely other tech giants).

Already nine years ago, when Proton was just a simple email service, it claimed that Google nearly killed Proton Mail by hiding the service from search results for queries such as “secure email” and “encrypted email.”

According to Proton, Google directly caused Proton Mail’s growth rate worldwide to be reduced by over 25% for over 10 months.

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