What Real View does with your data. In short: nothing.

Last updated 16 July 2026

The short version

Real View is a Chrome extension, built and maintained by one person, that looks at images on the pages you visit and flags ones that appear to be AI-generated. There is no account, no analytics, no advertising, and — this is the important part — no server operated by Real View or its developer that anything is ever sent to. Everything below exists to back that claim up in specific, checkable detail, not just assert it.

Why the extension can read pages you visit

Real View asks for permission to run on every site (rather than just sites you click "activate" on) because AI-generated images can appear anywhere — a social feed, a search engine, a news article, a shop listing. The extension's one job is to look at whatever images are actually on the page in front of you, so it needs to be able to run wherever that page happens to be. It does not track which pages you've visited, build a browsing history, or send that information anywhere — it only ever looks at the images on the page currently open, in the moment, to decide whether to blur or flag them.

What actually happens, in three layers

1. Metadata & source-domain check (always on). Real View reads embedded generator tags already present in an image file, and compares the image's source domain against a large list of known AI-generation platforms (which you can refresh manually — see below). This runs locally in your browser.

2. On-device visual model (opt-in). If you turn this on, a machine-learning model examines the actual pixels of images the first check couldn't classify. This model runs entirely inside your browser via WebAssembly, in a background document Chrome keeps alive for it. No image, and no result of classifying it, ever leaves your device. There is no cloud version of this feature — it either runs on your machine, or it doesn't run.

3. Your own corrections (personal, local). Right-clicking an image to flag it as AI-generated or real is stored in your browser's local storage only. It is never transmitted anywhere, and it's specific to you.

The exact network requests Real View makes, and why

None of the following involve sending anything about you, your browsing, or your images to anyone. Here's precisely what each one is:

The image's own host

To read embedded metadata, Real View re-fetches the first part of an image file directly from wherever the page already loaded it from — the same file, the same source, nothing new sent anywhere else.

GitHub (raw.githubusercontent.com)

A public, community-maintained blocklist of known AI-image domains ("Huge AI Blocklist"). Only fetched when you click "Refresh AI blocklist now" in Options — never automatically or in the background.

Hugging Face (huggingface.co)

The visual-model file itself, fetched once when you opt in and cached on your device afterward (via the browser's Cache Storage). No further requests happen once it's cached, and it can be deleted at any time from Options.

Pinterest (pinterest.com)

Only on pinterest.com itself: re-requests a pin's own public detail page to resolve its original source link, the same way clicking that pin in your browser would. Nothing is sent to Pinterest beyond a normal page request.

What's stored, and where

Your settings (whether AI images are hidden, blur vs. hide, whether the visual model is on) are stored via chrome.storage.sync — this is Chrome's own built-in sync, tied to your Google account if you have Chrome sync enabled, not anything Real View operates. Your personal image flags, the cached blocklist, and model-update-check state are stored via chrome.storage.local — device-only, never synced anywhere. Both are entirely within Chrome's own storage system; Real View has no database or server of its own to store anything in.

What Real View does not do

No accounts or sign-in No analytics or telemetry No advertising or ad IDs No sale or sharing of data No third-party SDKs Not directed at children

Deleting your data

Uninstalling the extension removes everything Chrome stored for it. You can also clear your flagged images and delete the downloaded visual model at any time from the Options page, without uninstalling.

Changes to this policy

If what Real View does ever changes in a way that affects this policy, this page will be updated and the date at the top will change. Real View is open source — you can verify any of the claims on this page directly against the source code, linked from the footer of the main site.

Questions

Open an issue on the GitHub repository linked from the homepage — that's the most reliable way to reach the person who actually maintains this.