IRVINE, Calif. — March 19, 2026 — Artificial intelligence is learning everything about us. Just not the parts of life that happened before smartphones.

“AI will remember selfies. Not your childhood,” said Mitch Goldstone, chief photo archivist at ScanMyPhotos.com.

Printed photos, slides, negatives, and home movies remain offline. None are visible to the artificial intelligence technology people now rely on.

“A new digital divide is emerging,” Goldstone said. “This time, it’s about which parts of your life technology can see and which it can’t.”

“An estimated 96% of all pre-digital photographs are invisible to AI,” he said.

That number comes from more than 4,000 people across the country who had their photos digitized over the past eight months. When asked when they last looked at their printed photos, slides, or home movies, 96% said they hadn’t seen them since they were first developed.

“People think their memories are safe because their phones are backed up,” Goldstone said. “But the years that matter most usually aren’t on their phone.”

AI tools are no longer just storing information. They decide what shows up. What gets surfaced. What gets remembered. But they can only work with what exists digitally.

That leaves decades of life outside what AI can see.

“AI is about to erase your past if your photos aren’t digitized,” Goldstone said.

“If it’s not digitized, it doesn’t exist to the future,” Goldstone said.

Contact: Mitch Goldstone, Chief Photo Archivist, ScanMyPhotos.com, 7 Corporate Park, Irvine, CA 92606, Goldstone@ScanMyPhotos.com