Google is changing how it handles the images, audio, and video you feed into Search, and the new default sweeps that data toward its AI models. According to The Verge AI, the company emailed users to announce a setting called “Search Services History,” which saves the pictures you scan with Google Lens, recordings from its real-time Search Live tool, voice searches, and phrases you speak into Translate. The Verge AI reports the change rolls out over the “next few months.”
What stands out here is the unbundling. Until now, these search interactions lived under Google’s broader Web & App Activity control, mixed in with toggles for audio recordings and visual searches. Google is pulling them into their own setting, with a separate “Save Media” option and a distinct “Personalized Recommendations” switch that governs tailored suggestions and ads.
What Google is collecting
The new Search Services History setting covers the media you hand to Search, not just the text you type. That includes:
- Images you search with Google Lens
- Recordings from Search Live, its real-time conversational search tool
- Voice search audio
- Phrases spoken into Google Translate
Google says it will use this history to “provide, develop, and improve its services,” and it names its AI models directly as part of that work. So the photo you scanned to identify a plant, or the sentence you spoke into Translate, can become training material.
Why this matters
This is significant because it marks a shift in what counts as “search history.” For years, that meant a list of queries and clicks. Now it means your camera roll snippets, your voice, and live recordings of your surroundings. That’s a richer, more personal data stream, and it’s exactly the kind of multimodal input that modern AI models are hungry for.
The timing fits a clear industry pattern. Companies building large models need huge volumes of real-world images, audio, and video, and first-party product data is the cleanest source they have. Google isn’t alone in mining its own services for training fuel, but folding Lens, Search Live, and Translate into one labeled bucket makes the pipeline more explicit than before.
There’s also a personalization angle. The separate “Personalized Recommendations” setting ties this saved media to tailored ads and suggestions. Google is keeping training and ad personalization as distinct switches, which gives users finer control but also more toggles to track.
What you can do about it
- Turn off Search Services History entirely
- Disable the “Save Media” option if you want searches without stored images, audio, or video
- Leave “Personalized Recommendations” off to avoid tailored ads and suggestions built from this data
If you already blocked Google from saving your search history through Web & App Activity, there’s good news on the privacy side: Google says it will keep Search Services History switched off after the transition and carry over your existing personalization preferences. So your past choices should hold rather than silently reset.
What to expect next
The rollout lands over the coming months, which means most people will get the email and the new settings on a staggered schedule. Two things are worth watching. First, whether the defaults favor saving by default for new or existing users who never set a Web & App Activity preference. Second, how clearly Google surfaces the “Save Media” control, since that’s the toggle separating a normal search from a contribution to its training data.
For practitioners and privacy-conscious users, the practical move is simple: when the email arrives, open your Google account’s data controls and decide deliberately rather than accepting the defaults. The settings exist, but they only protect you if you go find them.
More details are available at the original report from The Verge AI.