AI at PixelUnion – 2026 · Last updated: October 2026
In short
We use open-source AI models in PixelUnion for facial, text and object recognition, and these models run entirely within our own environment. We also use AI in our product development and in business operations, such as technical and customer support. AI tools used by our team cannot see your photos or library, and none of them are trained on your data. A person always checks what we ship.
Why we’re telling you this
Almost all businesses use AI, and it’s often unclear what they do with your data. You have the right to know exactly where we use it and where we don’t.
Our principles
- Your data stays on our platform. When an AI model works on your data, that processing happens on our own servers in Europe and nowhere else.
- EU first. For other AI purposes, we look at European options first. Where no European option is available, we may choose a non-European tool and say so openly.
- Privacy through the right contracts. When we use non-EU tools in our business processes, we only use tools with strong, verifiable privacy guarantees.
- People are accountable. AI assists, and people decide.
- Your data stays yours. AI tools used by our team cannot access your photos or the contents of your library.
- People search groups photos of the same person using facial recognition, so you can find someone without scrolling through your library.
- Smart search lets you search by what’s in a photo, like “birthday cake” or “beach”.
- Text recognition lets you search for text that appears in your photos, like letters or flyers.
These features are part of Immich, the open-source software PixelUnion is built on. They run on open-source models on our own servers in Europe and only work on the photos in your own account. Your data does not leave our network.
How we build and run PixelUnion
Our engineers use AI coding assistants. These tools work on our code only. They never have access to customer photos or customer data. Senior engineers set the direction and review what ships.
In our operations, we use AI to assist with technical incident handling, for example by analysing incoming alerts or platform telemetry.
For this we use:
- Claude Code by Anthropic.
- Various models through OpenRouter, only via providers that do not retain our data or train on it.
AI models used in these processes never have access to your photos or library contents.
How we work with you
We use a licensed AI model to read support tickets and prepare a first response. It can read your message, but it isn’t allowed to train on it or use it for anything else. Some of the sorting happens on models that run on our own servers. A person reads every reply and is accountable for it before it reaches you.
Images and content
- We avoid AI-generated images. We use a licensed image provider because we want to respect the people who create visual work.
- We may use AI to help write content, but a human is always accountable for the final result.
- We may use AI-made visuals, such as diagrams. If we do, we’ll label them.
Legal obligations
PixelUnion operates within European law and, like any online service, that includes obligations around illegal content. This is covered in our terms of service. AI tools used by our team cannot access or analyse your photos.
What we never do
- Train AI models on your photos, ours or anyone else’s.
- Send your photos to outside AI companies to make a feature work.
- Let AI make decisions about you or your account. A person is always behind that.
- Run ads, so no AI is profiling you for that.