Are AI Headshots Safe? What We Learned After 1.4 Million Photos

A behind-the-scenes look at privacy, data, and why most people almost didn't trust us

The email landed at 2 AM.

Subject line: "Where do my photos actually go?"

It was from a lawyer in Chicago. She'd spent 20 minutes on our site, read our pricing page twice, and hovered over the upload button. But she couldn't click it.

Her question wasn't about quality. It wasn't about price. It was about trust.

"I need to know, really know..what happens to my face after I give it to you."

That email changed how we built Headshot Photo.

The question nobody wants to ask out loud

Here's the thing about AI headshot generators: they're asking for something intimate.

Not your email address. Not your credit card. Your face.

Eight photos of it, actually. Different angles. Different expressions. The raw, unfiltered version of you that normally only your phone's camera roll sees.

And you're handing that over to... who, exactly?

A website. Some servers. An algorithm you don't understand. People you've never met.

When you frame it like that, the hesitation makes perfect sense.

We've now served over 14,000 customers and generated more than 1.4 million AI headshots. And I can tell you with certainty: the #1 objection isn't price. It isn't quality. It isn't turnaround time.

It's this: Is this safe?

So let me answer that. Not with marketing language. Not with legal disclaimers. With the actual decisions we made and why we made them.

What "safe" actually means (it's three different things)

When people ask if AI headshots are safe, they're usually asking one of three questions:

1. Will you use my photos to train your AI?

This is the big one.

The fear is that your face becomes part of a dataset. That your selfies get fed into a machine that learns from them. That somewhere, somehow, your features end up influencing headshots for strangers.

Our answer: No. Hard no.

We don't use customer photos to train our models. Period. Your images are used to generate your headshots and nothing else.

I know every company says this. So let me tell you why we made this decision, beyond ethics.

Training on customer data is actually a terrible business move. It creates legal liability. It makes enterprise clients run away. It turns every privacy regulation into a landmine. The risk-reward math doesn't work.

We'd rather pay for licensed training data than inherit the mess of using yours.

2. How long do you keep my photos?

This one's about the digital footprint.

Your selfies are stored for 7 days. That's it. After your headshots are generated and delivered, the training images auto-delete. Your final headshots stick around for 30 days so you can download them, then they're gone too.

You can also delete everything manually, anytime, from your account. No email required. No "please allow 30 business days." Just gone.

Why 7 days and not 24 hours? Honestly, because sometimes people need reshoots. If something goes wrong - bad lighting in the outputs, a weird artifact—we need those source images to fix it. Seven days gives us that buffer without keeping your data forever.

3. Who else can see my photos?

Nobody who shouldn't.

Your images hit our servers encrypted. They're processed by our AI. They're stored in secure cloud infrastructure. They're deleted on schedule.

We don't sell data. We don't share it with advertisers. We don't have some shady third-party arrangement where your face ends up in a stock photo database.

Our business model is simple: you pay us, we make headshots. That's the entire transaction. Your data isn't the product. The headshots are the product.

The certifications that actually matter

Here's where I'll be honest: certifications can be meaningless theater.

Some companies slap a "GDPR Compliant" badge on their site without actually doing the work. It's like putting a "organic" sticker on candy.

So let me explain what ours actually mean.

ISO 27001 Certification

This is an international standard for information security management. Getting it isn't easy. It requires documented processes for how data is handled, stored, accessed, and destroyed. It requires regular audits. It requires someone to actually check that we're doing what we say we're doing.

It's expensive. It's time-consuming. And for a bootstrapped company, it was a real debate internally.

But here's why we did it: enterprise clients.

When a company wants to buy AI headshots for 500 employees, their legal team asks questions. Hard questions. Having ISO 27001 means we can answer those questions with documentation, not promises.

GDPR and CCPA Compliance

If you're in Europe, you have rights under GDPR. If you're in California, you have rights under CCPA. These include the right to know what data we have, the right to delete it, and the right to opt out of certain uses.

We honor all of these. Not because we have to (we're based in India, technically outside some jurisdictions), but because it's the right standard to hold ourselves to.

The part nobody tells you: trust is built in the bad moments

We have about 200 reviews on Reviews.io. Our average is 4.7 stars.

Not 5.0.

4.7.

That gap matters. Because inside that 0.3 stars are the people who had problems.

Some headshots didn't look like the person. Some outputs had weird artifacts. Some people struggled with our photo upload requirements.

Here's what I've learned: trust isn't built when everything goes right. It's built when something goes wrong and you fix it.

Our policy is simple. If you're unhappy, you get a reshoot. If the reshoot doesn't work, you get a refund. No interrogation. No "prove you're not scamming us." Just... fixed.

We respond to every negative review publicly. Not with defensive corporate-speak, but with actual solutions. "Sorry that happened. Email us at hello@headshotphoto.io and we'll make it right."

One reviewer wrote that our photo validation was too strict, she had to upload 30 photos before 8 got accepted. She was frustrated. Rightfully so.

We didn't delete the review or argue with her. We fixed the validation system. And we thanked her for the feedback publicly.

That's the unsexy work of building trust. Not the certifications. Not the privacy policy. The willingness to hear criticism and actually change.

What to look for in any AI headshot service

Whether you use us or someone else, here's what actually matters:

Clear deletion timelines. Not "we may retain data for a reasonable period." Specific numbers. 7 days. 30 days. Something concrete.

Explicit statement on AI training. Do they use your photos to improve their model? If the answer is vague or buried, assume yes.

Responsive support. Before you buy, email them a question. See how fast they respond and how human it feels. That tells you everything about how they'll handle problems.

Real reviews on third-party sites. Not testimonials on their homepage- those are curated. Look at Reviews.io, G2, or Capterra. Read the negative reviews specifically. See how the company responds.

Refund policy that's actually usable. "No refunds on digital products" is a red flag. Legitimate services stand behind their work.

The real answer to "is it safe?"

Here's what I've learned after watching 14,000 people make this decision:

Safety isn't binary. It's a feeling.

You can read our privacy policy, check our certifications, and verify our reviews and still feel uncertain. That's okay. You're being asked to trust strangers with your face. That deserves careful consideration.

What I can tell you is this:

We built Headshot Photo to be the service we'd want to use ourselves. Every privacy decision, every data policy, every support interaction, we ask, "Would this feel right if it were my photos?"

If that's enough for you, we'd love to help you get a great headshot.

If it's not, I genuinely understand. And I hope this article at least helped you know what questions to ask whoever you do choose.

Your face is yours. Wherever you upload it, make sure you trust who's on the other side