If you use Google to search, snap a photo with Lens, or speak into Translate, some of what you feed it may now be helping to train the company's AI. A quiet change to Google's privacy settings, rolled out in June, expanded the kinds of data the company can store to improve its models, and it switched most users in by default. Malaysians, among the heaviest Google users in the region, are opted in too, unless they go and change it.
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What actually changed
TechCrunch reports that Google updated the privacy settings for its Search services through a customer email in June, introducing two new controls: Search Services History and Personalized Recommendations. On paper the update is framed as giving users more say over their saved activity. In practice, as reporter Sarah Perez notes, it also opted people into broader AI training "under the guise of giving users more control."
The expanded storage covers media, not just typed queries. In Google's own language quoted by TechCrunch, saved "images, files, and audio and video recordings" can be retained to develop and improve its services, "including AI models and safety measures." That reach extends across Search, Maps, Shopping, Flights, Hotels, Translate, and News. Use Google Lens to identify a plant or a product and the photo can be saved. Use Search Live or voice search and the audio can be kept. Practise a phrase out loud in Translate and that recording counts too.
Why this matters for Malaysian readers
Malaysia has spent the past two years tightening its data rules, which makes an opt-out-by-default setting worth a second look. The Personal Data Protection (Amendment) Act 2024 rolled out in phases through 2025, adding mandatory breach notification, a requirement to appoint data protection officers, biometric data as a protected category, and data portability rights. Legal analysts have also stressed that consent for AI use is meant to be purpose-specific: a blanket "AI processing" tick is generally not treated as enough under the local framework.
Google's servers and much of this processing sit outside Malaysia, so the practical protection for a local user is not a regulator stepping in tomorrow. It is the settings page. The gap between "we gave you control" and "we turned it on for you" is exactly the kind of default that the PDPA reforms and Malaysia's National Guidelines on AI Governance and Ethics were written to push back on. Until enforcement catches up with cross-border AI training, the job of opting out lands on the individual.
How to turn it off
You do have a switch. TechCrunch's walkthrough points to the Search Services History and Search Services Personalization pages inside your Google account. On the history page you can untick "Save Media" on its own, or untick both "Save Media" and "Search Services History" together. You can also set saved data to auto-delete after three months, 18 months, or 36 months. Choosing the shortest window is the fastest way to limit how long anything lingers.
One catch worth knowing: the update split the old "Web & App Activity" control into two separate settings, and the new Search data setting is on by default. So if you switched off Web & App Activity in the past and assumed you were covered, you probably are not anymore. You will need to open the new Search services controls specifically.
The takeaway
None of this is unique to Google. Meta and others are increasingly training on what users upload rather than only what can be scraped from the open web, and the pattern of opt-out defaults is becoming the industry norm. For Malaysian users the fix is simple and free: spend two minutes in your Google privacy settings, decide what you are comfortable sharing, and set the rest to delete itself.
Images courtesy of Shutter Speed, Christin Hume, and FlyD on Unsplash.