A few days ago, I took a photo of my car.
The photo looked great.
The lighting was right. The angle was right. The background was right.
There was just one problem.
My license plate was visible.
Now I had a choice:
Share the photo and expose a personal identifier.
Open another app and manually blur it.
Draw a black rectangle over it like it was 2007.
Or simply not share the photo.
For something so common, the workflow feels surprisingly primitive.
And that’s strange because Google Photos already understands almost everything else in the image.
It can identify faces.
It can identify pets.
It can identify locations.
It can identify objects.
It can identify text.
It can even suggest edits automatically.
Yet one of the most obvious pieces of personally identifiable information in a photograph is still treated as if it doesn’t exist.
Every car owner has the same problem
Cars have become increasingly personal.
People photograph them when they’re new.
They photograph them after modifications.
They photograph them during road trips.
They photograph them after detailing sessions.
They photograph them when selling them.
They photograph them because they’re proud of them.
But almost every one of those photos contains a license plate.
And unlike a random tree in the background, a license plate is directly tied to a specific vehicle.
Many people are uncomfortable sharing it publicly.
Not because they’re paranoid.
Because they prefer a little privacy.
The same way people often blur house numbers.
Or hide phone numbers.
Or crop out sensitive documents.
The intent isn’t secrecy.
It’s simply reducing unnecessary exposure.
The current solutions are terrible
Today, if you want to hide a license plate, your options are surprisingly limited.
You can:
Manually scribble over it.
Use a third-party editing app.
Open Photoshop.
Use an AI editor.
Export and re-import the image.
All of these introduce friction.
And friction matters.
Most people don’t skip privacy because they don’t care.
They skip privacy because it requires effort.
The best privacy features are invisible.
They work with a single tap.
Or better yet, they work automatically.
Google Photos already knows how to do this
The interesting part is that the technical problem is largely solved.
Modern computer vision systems can identify:
Faces
Text
Cars
Traffic signs
Buildings
Animals
License plate detection has existed for years.
Parking lots use it.
Toll booths use it.
Law enforcement uses it.
Security systems use it.
The challenge isn’t detection.
The challenge is product design.
Imagine this workflow
You take a photo of your car.
Google Photos processes the image.
A suggestion appears:
Hide license plate?
Tap once.
Done.
That’s it.
No cropping.
No exporting.
No editing.
No learning curve.
Just a simple privacy enhancement.
Users could choose:
Blur
Pixelate
Solid mask
Replace with a generic plate
The original photo remains untouched.
A copy is created for sharing.
Exactly the same way many editing workflows already operate.
Better yet, make it part of sharing
The smartest implementation might not even live inside the editor.
It could live inside the sharing flow.
Imagine opening the Share menu and seeing a new section called Privacy Controls:
Hide faces
Hide license plates
Remove location information
The user doesn’t have to remember.
The product remembers for them.
Suddenly privacy becomes proactive instead of reactive.
This isn’t really about cars
The deeper lesson here has nothing to do with vehicles.
For decades, software has focused on helping us create and share more content.
We’re now entering an era where software also needs to help us share more thoughtfully.
The next generation of product design won’t just ask:
How do we make sharing easier?
It will ask:
How do we make sharing safer?
Because the internet has changed.
The volume of content has changed.
The permanence of content has changed.
And our expectations around privacy have changed with it.
Google Photos already helps us improve photos.
Perhaps the next step is helping us protect ourselves inside them.
The future of photography may not be better cameras.
It may be smarter decisions about what gets shared in the first place.
If someone at Google sees this:
Build This Next.
I write about how products can be better — fixing what’s broken and imagining what’s missing.
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