The system that scours search results doesn’t store the images, but they are stored. Maybe or maybe not by Google, but someone is collecting them and keeping them in order to feed whatever “AI” or hashing algorithm comes next.
And it’s actually not the “whole point” in a technical sense. It’s mentioned because they want to make it sound less harmful. You’d never compare actual images directly. That would take a ton of storage space and time to compare a large set of files byte for byte. You always use hashes. If it was easier or cheaper to use the images directly, they would, just like the “AI” agents that do this in other systems need the actual images not hashes.
The whole point of using hashes here is to not store images.
The system that scours search results doesn’t store the images, but they are stored. Maybe or maybe not by Google, but someone is collecting them and keeping them in order to feed whatever “AI” or hashing algorithm comes next.
And it’s actually not the “whole point” in a technical sense. It’s mentioned because they want to make it sound less harmful. You’d never compare actual images directly. That would take a ton of storage space and time to compare a large set of files byte for byte. You always use hashes. If it was easier or cheaper to use the images directly, they would, just like the “AI” agents that do this in other systems need the actual images not hashes.