A Google Photos alternative with no AI: the honest options

Google Photos is very good software. It backs up your camera roll, finds any photo in seconds and works on every phone. A lot of that comes from AI, and more of it every year.

If you are here, you have probably decided you want less of that. This post explains what Google Photos does with AI, what Google says it does not do, and which alternatives fit which job. We make anonity, which is one of the options below, so we will be clear about where it fits and where it does not.

What Google Photos does with AI

Three features do most of the work:

• Face groups. Google Photos groups photos by the faces in them, so you can find everyone's pictures by person. You can turn face groups off in settings.
• Search by what is in the photo. "Beach", "dog", "receipt": the app finds them because it has analysed the image.
• Gemini features. Ask Photos lets you ask questions about your library in plain language, and there are AI editing tools.

What Google says about your data, from its Gemini features in Photos privacy hub: your personal data in Google Photos is never used for ads, and Google does not train generative AI models outside of Google Photos with it.

So the accurate version is not "Google trains AI on your photos". It is this: Google Photos analyses your photos to power its own features, and that is the whole point of the product. If you want your pictures in a place where no system looks at what is in them, you need something else.

First: which job are you hiring it for?

Most people use Google Photos for two different jobs, and the best replacement is different for each.

1. Backing up your own camera roll. Every photo, full quality, automatically, in case your phone dies.
2. Sharing with the people in the photos. A trip, a friend group, a family. Albums other people can see and add to.

Replace the first job with a backup service. Replace the second with a place built for groups. Trying to do both with one app is how you end up back in Google Photos.

For backup, without AI looking at your photos

Ente

Ente is an end-to-end encrypted photo backup service with open-source apps for Android, iPhone, desktop and web. It does have face grouping and smart search, but they run on your device, so Ente's servers never see your photos unencrypted. Ente advertises 10 GB free. It is the closest thing to Google Photos for people who want encryption, and it supports shared albums too.

Proton Drive

Proton Drive, from the company behind Proton Mail, is end-to-end encrypted cloud storage with photo backup in its mobile apps. It is simpler than Ente as a photo app, and a natural pick if you already use Proton.

iCloud Photos with Advanced Data Protection

If you are on iPhone, turning on Advanced Data Protection makes iCloud Photos end-to-end encrypted. Apple's Photos app does recognise people and objects, but it does that analysis on your device.

Immich

Immich is open source and self-hosted: you run it on your own computer or server. It looks and feels a lot like Google Photos, and its AI features run on your hardware, not someone else's. The price is that you are the IT department, including backups of the backup.

For sharing with a group, without AI at all

Backup services can share albums, but they are built around one person's library. For a group that wants one shared place, that shows: albums pile up, nobody knows where anything is, and half the group never installs the app.

This is the job anonity was built for. A group plants a tree, everyone joins through one invite link, and each person adds their photos, videos, notes and voice notes. The tree lays everything out on a timeline by the date it happened. When you bulk-add photos, anonity reads the date each was taken and makes one moment per day.

On AI specifically:

• No face recognition, no search by what is in a photo, no AI features. None of that exists in anonity.
• The only automated check reads the first bytes of each uploaded file to confirm it really is a photo or video and not, say, a program renamed to .jpg.
• No ads, so there is no one to sell attention to.
• Location data is removed from photos when they are uploaded, so a tree does not quietly publish where everyone lives.

What anonity is not

It is not a backup. Photos are resized for screens when they are uploaded, which keeps trees fast and storage affordable but means your camera originals should live in one of the services above. Photos in a tree are encrypted in transit and at rest but not end-to-end encrypted; direct messages are, and a tree's group chat can be. And there is no native iPhone app yet: it runs in Safari and can be added to the home screen, while Android has an app on Google Play.

A setup that works

For most people who want to leave Google Photos, the simplest honest setup is two tools:

Before you leave, you can take your library with you using Google Takeout, which exports everything in Google Photos as downloadable files.

If sharing is the part you want to fix, plant a free tree. The free plan covers 3 trees and 1 GB, with as many people as you like.