Is Leonardo AI private? What the free and paid plans let others see and train on

The Morse teamPublished November 8, 20266 min read

No, not on the free plan. As of November 2026, Leonardo.Ai makes everything a free account creates public, lets search engines index it, may train its models on it, and takes ownership of it; deleting an image takes a paid plan. Paying adds a Private Mode toggle that keeps new images out of other users' view and out of Leonardo's training, but your prompts still sit on Leonardo's servers, and some of its models run on other companies' servers.

We read Leonardo's privacy policy, its terms of service (last updated January 19, 2026), its pricing page, and five articles in its help center on November 8, 2026, along with Canva's announcement of the purchase. Leonardo deserves credit for saying all this plainly. Its privacy policy says "publicly available by default" in so many words, and its terms spell out clause by clause what changes when you pay.

Leonardo AI privacy by plan

As of November 8, 2026, from Leonardo's privacy policy, terms, pricing FAQ, and help center.

Are Leonardo AI images public?

Yes, on the free plan, with no setting to change it. The privacy policy says "all Content you generate is publicly available by default," that other users may view it, and that it "can be indexed by search engines" (Leonardo). Content here means more than pictures: the policy defines it to include your text prompts, uploaded photos, and their metadata.

Paid subscribers get a choice. Leonardo's help center says paid users see a Private Mode toggle "on the left side bar of the AI creation tools," and that images made with it off "will be visible and useable by other members" (Leonardo). You can also change an image's visibility later from your Library. Making it private afterwards doesn't pull back copies. The policy warns that removed content may still be "viewable in cached and archived pages," or kept by users who copied it.

Does Leonardo AI train on your images?

Yes, unless you pay and generate privately. The privacy policy says Leonardo may analyze your content "to train our algorithms, models, and AI products," then adds: "If you don't want your Content to be used for machine learning, you can generate Content privately with any paid subscription plan" (Leonardo).

The terms set the two licenses side by side. For private content, clause 8.5 says Leonardo will not use it for any other purpose, "including training AI models or developing new products without your express written consent." For public content, clause 8.6 grants Leonardo a perpetual, transferable license to use it for "training AI models, developing new offerings, or for any commercial purpose" (Leonardo).

Two lines in the policy sit outside that promise. Its safety section says Leonardo may use your content "to develop our algorithms and models to identify violations," and it doesn't say whether that excludes private content. And Leonardo also trains on "information that is publicly available on the Internet," so a picture you posted elsewhere can reach its training data without passing through your account.

Where do your prompts go when you pick Nano Banana or GPT Image?

To another company's servers, whatever your privacy setting. Leonardo's pricing FAQ says third-party models "such as Nano Banana, GPT Image, Veo, Kling, Seedance and Seedream" run "entirely on external servers via paid third-party APIs," which is why they can't use its unlimited relaxed queue (Leonardo). Private Mode governs what Leonardo and its users do with an image. It doesn't keep the prompt inside Leonardo when the model belongs to someone else, and the pages we read don't say what those providers may keep. Leonardo's own models, such as Lucid Origin and Phoenix, are the ones its FAQ doesn't describe as running elsewhere.

Who owns the images you make on Leonardo?

It depends on the plan. On a paid plan, clause 8.3 says ownership of what you create "will vest in you upon creation." On the free plan, clause 8.7 says it "will vest in us upon creation," meaning Leonardo, and you assign it any rights you'd otherwise hold (Leonardo).

Free users can still use their images commercially. Leonardo's help article on commercial use, dated August 25, 2026, says the difference is that a free user's images can be used by others too (Leonardo). Its FAQ adds that images you made privately while paying stay yours if you later move to the free plan.

Can you delete Leonardo AI images?

Only on a paid plan. The help center's answer to "How to delete my generated images?" opens with "Deleting images requires a paid subscription" (Leonardo). A free user's public images stay up until the whole account goes.

To delete the account, Leonardo's guide, dated February 18, 2026, says to cancel any subscription first, then open the settings icon at the bottom left of the Home page and choose Delete account under your profile. It says this "will remove all of your information from our database" (Leonardo). The privacy policy hedges more. Where data sits in "backup archives," Leonardo isolates it "until deletion is possible," and otherwise keeps information "for as long as your account is active" or while it has "a valid purpose." The terms also let Leonardo delete an account after 12 months without use, after emailing you.

Does Canva own Leonardo AI?

Yes. Canva announced it was buying Leonardo in 2024, and Leonardo's policy now calls itself "a Canva brand," though the company you contract with is still Leonardo Interactive Pty Ltd in Surry Hills, Australia, and your data is stored in the United States. Canva's announcement promised that "no Canva user content will be shared with Leonardo unless Canva users have chosen to expressly opt-in" (Canva). That promise runs one way. Leonardo's own policy lets it disclose your information to "our group companies," which include Canva. For Canva's side, see does Canva train AI on your designs.

Does Leonardo share your data with advertisers?

Yes, for ad targeting. Leonardo's privacy policy lets it pass your email, rough location, and cookie data to ad networks and social platforms so they can find you on other sites, though it says it doesn't sell that data for their own marketing (Leonardo). In the US, the "Do not sell or share" banner or an email to privacy@leonardo.ai stops it.

How to make Leonardo AI as private as it gets

1. Subscribe to any paid plan, since Private Mode doesn't exist on the free one.
2. Turn on Private Mode in the left sidebar before you generate.
3. Open your Library and switch older public images to private, then delete the ones you don't need.
4. Prefer Leonardo's own models for anything sensitive, since third-party ones run on other companies' servers.
5. Opt out of ad sharing through the banner or privacy@leonardo.ai.

How to keep the images you make on your own device

Every gap above has one cause. Your prompts and pictures live on Leonardo's servers under your account, so privacy becomes a setting Leonardo sells, a license it holds, and a deletion it decides when to finish.

Where Leonardo makes free images public, Studio stores yours in your browser, encrypted, on the Free plan too, which includes 3 images a day on Z-Image Turbo with no card. Where Leonardo's license covers training on public work, Morse doesn't train AI on your content at all, and it doesn't sell your data, show ads, or run advertising trackers. Where Leonardo makes deletion a paid feature, clearing your browser deletes your Studio images on any plan, and Morse can't recover them afterwards, so keep copies of the ones you like. Pro, $19 a month, adds more image models, including unfiltered ones, which are on paid plans only.

If you'd rather work out a prompt in words before rendering it, start a chat in Private mode with an open model such as DeepSeek or GLM; Morse has zero data retention agreements with its inference, search, and other providers.

Start free and make three images today, kept encrypted in your browser, or compare more image apps in the best private AI image generator.