Smart Albums: Privacy & Security of Photos
Hello,
Pardon my ignorance of how Ente Photos works, but I am curious about the privacy and security of my photos in Ente Photos after reading your blog post: https://ente.io/blog/photos-v1.2/in where it is announced that Ente Photos "now has the ability to add photos of people automatically to your albums" (Smart Albums).
So the question is, how exactly is this being done? Using some type of AI in the cloud to process the photos? Or is it all done locally on my device? I guess my concern is that if it is being done off-device by some AI in the cloud that there is a potential that my photos aren't really private and secure.
5 Replies
Ente Photos uses machine learning to add photos of people automatically to your albums. It is beneficial to enable machine learning before importing your photos, as this allows the Ente app to index your files as they are getting uploaded instead of needing to download them again. You can find more information on this feature at https://help.ente.io/photos/features/machine-learning#machine-learning.
The indexes are synced across all your devices automatically using the same end-to-end encrypted security that Ente uses for syncing your photos.
-# If your issue is resolved, feel free to use the /solved command to close this thread. If you'd like to ask me another question use /docsearch
Machine learning | Ente Help
Ente supports on-device machine learning for face and natural language search
How safe and secure is machine learning in protecting the privacy and security of my photos? For a privacy focused app you'd think that you might explain this important question a little more in depth in your help article.
All of ente’s machine learning runs on device and all photos are encrypted before being uploaded
I do agree the documentation could go into a little more detail that all ML is done on device and none of it is in the cloud, but it is briefly covered in the intro
This is a more detailed on how ML on Ente works - https://ente.io/ml/
ente
Machine Learning
Learn how Ente uses on-device machine learning to power private, end-to-end encrypted features like face recognition and semantic search—without a cloud.
Thank you @Tom & @setal for sharing that additional and very helpful info with me, and also for noting my feedback. I now know and can rest assured that Ente Photos fully protects the privacy and security of my photos when machine learning is in use.