Google has updated its privacy policy to allow personal information from Gmail, Google Photos, and Drive to potentially be used for targeted advertising, raising new questions about how the company handles users’ private data.
The change, which took effect on October 16, introduces a significant exception to Google’s previous promise that it would not use content from these services to personalize advertisements.
As first spotted by Android Authority, the updated policy specifically affects users who connect their personal information to Google’s AI-powered services, including Search and Gemini.
Maybe try Ente then?
Haven’t used it before myself, but I’ve heard good things, and it does have a memories feature, and it seems at least based on the examples on their website that it might generate something more than just “today x years ago”.
Unsure to what degree it works though, and unfortunately Ente is also a paid service (though it is privacy focused, and I believe it has a FOSS app too)
Seems like “Smart Memories” are on the roadmap for Immich though, so you might just have to wait a bit and can then switch once they’re there:
There aren’t really any other mature options out there for self hosted, or even just private Google Photos alternatives in my experience, so you’re kinda just stuck with Immich for the most feature-complete replacement, and Ente for a more “just works” private but not self-hosted one. Everything else is basically just a glorified file browser, but maybe with some smart searching or better media codec support.
Smart Memories sounds exactly like what I want so I’ll definitely check it out once the feature goes Gold. Thanks for doing the heavy lifting for me.