Articles

Is it safe to upload your child's photo to a personalised book maker? Four questions to ask first

29 October 2026

It depends on the company. A photo is as safe as the answers to four questions: who receives it, how long they keep it, whether they train their system on it, and how you get it deleted. If a company cannot answer all four in writing, do not upload. A good answer names the service, a number of days and a deletion route.

What happens to a photo, step by step

A book made from a photo usually follows this path.

1. Upload. The photo goes from your phone to the company's server, usually into cloud storage.
2. Picture step. The company passes the photo to an image service, often run by a third party, with instructions to draw your child in a style.
3. Storage. The company keeps the photo, the drawings and your order for some time.
4. Deletion. At some point the photos should be removed. Some companies delete on a schedule. Some delete only when you ask. Some do not say.

Risk can sit at any of the four steps. The four questions below cover them.

The four questions

1. Who sees the photo?

Ask for the list: the company, the image provider, the cloud host, the payment and email services. A trustworthy policy names them. "Trusted partners" is not a name.

A good answer: "Photos are sent to [named image provider] to make your book and to nobody else." A weak answer: "We may share data with service providers."

2. How long is it kept?

Look for a number of days, in writing, for both the company and the image provider. Two examples from public pages, read on 10 October 2026:

• Imagitime says unsaved previews are erased after 24 hours, and that images from a saved preview or an order are kept for a limited period (12 months), then deleted automatically (imagitime.com).
• Genie in a Book says it does not "retain photos beyond what is needed" for your book (genieinabook.com). That is a rule without a number of days.

Neither of these is a verdict on the company. They show the difference between an answer with a number and an answer without one. Prefer the number.

3. Is the photo used for training?

Training means a system learns from your photo. The company could do that with its own system. Or the image provider could. Ask about both. Look for plain wording such as "never used for training".

You may see the phrase zero data retention. One routing service defines it in its documentation: "Zero Data Retention (ZDR) means that a provider will not store your data for any period of time." It also says ZDR providers cannot train on your data (openrouter.ai/docs, read 10 October 2026). Two limits are worth knowing. ZDR does not cover plugins or tools a company switches on, such as web search. And a provider can still run abuse screening under its own terms. For example, Google's paid Gemini API terms say it logs prompts and responses "for a limited period of time, solely for detecting and preventing violations" of its usage policy, and that it does not use paid-tier prompts to improve its products (ai.google.dev, read 10 October 2026). That terms page gives no number of days.

So when a company says "zero data retention", ask: what is still logged, by whom, and for how long?

4. How do I get it deleted?

You want an email address, a promise to answer and a stated time. "Email us at [address] and we delete it" is a good answer. A web form that does not work on mobile is not.

Risks that are real, and risks that are overstated

Real: photos scraped from public places. Human Rights Watch reported in June 2024 that LAION-5B, a dataset used to train image tools, contained links to identifiable photos of Brazilian children, some with names in captions. HRW found 170 photos while reviewing a tiny share of the dataset. Many came from personal blogs and photo-sharing sites (hrw.org, 10 June 2024). The lesson is about public posts, not private uploads to a paid service. A photo that was never posted publicly cannot be scraped from a public page.

Real: deepfakes made from social media photos. The same HRW report says at least 85 girls from six states reported that classmates used editing tools to make sexually explicit deepfakes from their social media photos. This risk comes from photos on public profiles. It is not caused by uploading to a book maker, but it is a reason to keep a child's face off public profiles.

Real: free apps with broad terms. ESET, a security company, wrote in 2023 about a photo app that admitted collecting data and sharing it with third parties, had no age checks and produced unpredictable results (ESET, 4 August 2023). That article is about one avatar app, not book makers. Its advice still holds: read the rules before you install.

Overstated: "they will remember my child's face." What matters is what the company or provider logs and trains on. That is what question 3 is for. If the answer is a clear "never used for training", with a stated log period, this fear shrinks to the logging that remains.

Overstated: "every upload is the same." A company that deletes after 30 days under a zero-data-retention agreement and one that keeps images for 12 months are different risks. Treat them differently.

Open: how well public claims match private practice. You cannot audit a company. You can read what it commits to in writing, ask a question by email and keep the answer. Do that.

A two-minute checklist

Before you upload, open the privacy page and find these.

• [ ] The image provider is named.
• [ ] A number of days is given for storage and deletion.
• [ ] "Not used for training" is stated in plain words.
• [ ] You can delete early, by email or a working form.
• [ ] Location data is stripped, or you can remove it yourself (see below).
• [ ] The company says what it does with your child's name.
• [ ] A contact address answers.

If you find three or more gaps, do not upload.

Remove location data yourself. Phone photos carry location in their metadata. On an iPhone, open the photo, tap the "i", choose "Adjust" next to the location line, then "No Location". On Android, open the photo in Google Photos, open the details and edit or remove the location. Menus change between versions, so check the steps on your phone.

An email you can send

If the privacy page leaves a gap, ask. Copy this and change the company name.

Hello. Before I order, I have four questions about my child's photo. Which image provider receives it? How many days do you and the provider keep it? Is it used for training, yours or theirs? How do I ask you to delete it, and how fast do you answer? Thank you.

A company that answers in plain words within a few days is telling you something good. A company that sends a link to a long policy and no numbers is telling you something too. Keep the reply.

Another child's photo: you need the parent's yes

If you order a book for a niece, a grandchild or a friend's child, ask the parent first. The parent decides whether their child's photo goes to an image service. Say what you will upload, where it goes and how the pictures are made, then wait for an answer. A good book maker asks you to confirm the parent's consent at checkout. If the book is a surprise for the child, it is still not a surprise for the parent: get the yes to the photos first.

What Firefly Jar does with photos

Firefly Jar is a personalised picture book, painted from the photos a parent uploads. You pay $49 for the PDF and a printed hardcover is coming at $79. Here is what our privacy page and our FAQ say. Check the live pages before you rely on them.

• The pictures are made by software from your photos. The photos go to one AI model only (Google Gemini, through OpenRouter), for the character sheet, the pages and nothing else, on a paid plan with a zero-data-retention agreement. They are not used to train anything.
• Your child's name is never put in any prompt.
• Location data is stripped from photos before they leave our server.
• Google keeps an automated abuse-screening log for up to about 55 days. That log is not training data either.
• We delete the photos from our storage 30 days after delivery, sooner if you ask at fireflyjarbooks@gmail.com. The finished files stay at a private link for 30 days.
• Gal looks at every finished book before it is sent to you.
• If the child is not yours, the order form asks you to confirm that their parent or guardian knows and has said yes, including to how the pictures are made from the photos.

Notice what that list does not say. It does not say "we never store your photos". They sit in our storage while the book is made and for 30 days after. It does not say "deleted immediately". And it does not remove Google's abuse-screening log.

You can check every line against the privacy policy.

What we could not check

• We did not audit any company's practice. We read public pages.
• The 55 day figure for Google's abuse log comes from our own privacy page. We could not find a number in Google's public Gemini API terms.
• ESET's article covers one app in 2023 and may not describe current apps.

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe to upload my child's photo to a personalised book maker?
It depends on four answers: who receives the photo, how long it is kept, whether it is used for training and how you delete it. Get all four in writing.

Do personalised book makers train on my child's photos?
Some say never; some do not say. Look for the words "not used for training" on the privacy page and ask by email if they are missing.

What does zero data retention mean?
The image provider does not store your data for any period of time, in that definition. It does not cover every tool, and a provider can still run abuse screening under its own terms.

How long should a company keep my child's photos?
Look for a number of days and a deletion route. Shorter is better. 30 days after delivery is one example; 12 months is another.

Can I order a personalised book with another child's photo?
Only with the parent's yes. Ask first, say what you will upload and wait for the answer.