People worry about the chat. The images deserve more concern: they're easier to reach, they stick around longer, and they get the least attention in the policies people actually read.
Where a generated file ends up
When an app makes a picture, it saves the file to object storage and hands it out through a content delivery network, the same setup any website uses for its images. Your gallery is really just a list of those files.
What matters is how each file is guarded. Apps take one of two approaches, and the gap between them is large:
Signed or authenticated links. The link runs out, or the server verifies your session before it delivers the file. Copy the address into another browser and you get nothing.
Long, unguessable links. The file lives at an address no one could plausibly guess, and whoever holds that address can open it, signed in or not, indefinitely.
The second kind is everywhere, since it's cheap and quick. It isn't unreasonable, because the address really can't be guessed. But it means secrecy of the link, not access control, is the only protection. A link you share, paste into a chat or that a browser extension records is now a public link.
A ten-second test: open a generated image in a new tab, copy its address and paste it into a private window. If the picture loads, obscurity is the only thing guarding it. Good to know before you generate anything you wouldn't want detached from your account and passed around.
Why deletion tends to miss them
Chats and images normally live in separate systems. A deletion request wired to the conversation database doesn't automatically reach object storage, and the CDN may keep cached copies for a while after the original is gone.
This isn't automatically bad faith. It's what happens when deletion is built around the main database while images sit elsewhere.
When you close an account, the practical step is to ask outright: does this cover generated images, and how long until they're purged from storage and cache? The full process is in deleting an AI companion account.
Moderation holds onto copies
Images get scanned, automatically and at times by staff. Anything flagged is usually kept longer than ordinary content, and often carved out of deletion, because keeping it is how the operator shows it complied.
That's routine and most policies say so. It also means the picture that tripped a filter is the one most likely to outlast your account.
Two firm rules
Don't upload a photo of a real person. Not a partner, not a celebrity, not a stranger from a dating app. Every credible operator forbids it. More and more jurisdictions criminalize generating intimate imagery of an identifiable person without consent. And it's the fastest path to a permanent ban with no appeal.
The technical and the ethical point the same way here: the person in the photo never agreed to appear in your chat history, and that history is stored.
Assume the prompt is saved with the image. The text you typed to get a picture is normally kept alongside it, and it reveals far more than the picture does. People guard their images and forget about their prompts.
If you want to keep your pictures
Download the ones you care about and treat the gallery as temporary. Apps reshuffle storage, change plans, expire media on inactive accounts and now and then lose files.
Then store them somewhere you control, and think about where that is. A photo library that syncs to a family account, or uploads automatically to a shared cloud drive, has only moved the exposure, not ended it.
What to check when you're choosing an app
Two items belong on your free-tier checklist, next to the consistency and latency tests:
- Whether image links require authentication, using the private-window test above.
- Whether the app has a bulk download or an export that includes media.
Apps that invest heavily in media, such as Candy AI with images and voice under one subscription and Secret Desires with image and short video generation, are where you'll pile up the most files. That makes the ten-second link test worth more there, not less.
