This Website Shows How Much Googles AI Can Glean From Your Photos [Video]

Software engineer Vishnu Mohandas decided he would quit Google in more ways than one when he learned the tech giant had briefly helped the US military develop AI to study drone footage. In 2020, he left his job working on Google Assistant and also stopped backing up all of his images to Google Photos. He feared that his content could be used to train AI systems, even if they weren’t specifically ones tied to the Pentagon project. “I don’t control any of the future outcomes that this will enable,” Mohandas thought. “So now, shouldn’t I be more responsible?”

Mohandas, who taught himself programming and is based in Bengaluru, India, decided he wanted to develop an alternative service for storing and sharing photos that is open source and end-to-end encrypted. Something “more private, wholesome, and trustworthy,” he says. The paid service he designed, Ente, is profitable and says it has over 100,000 users, many of whom are already part of the …