So this is a project specifically marketed as E2E encrypted, and you are "waiting for the time when they are covering my needs (face recognition, object / scene detection...)"
You will be waiting a long long time for that.
The only way they can do that is client side, and if they go there we are back to the last few weeks discussion of Apple's new client side image scanning shit.
You do not want this service, it seems.
You want a non Google service who can do face recognition, and object/scene detection, but who'll pinky promise you they won't sell you out to advertisers or law enforcement or governments, even though they obviously could.
> we are back to the last few weeks discussion of Apple's new client side image scanning
Apple has always been indexing images on the client side. What changed is that they're now reporting the presence of a predetermined set of hashes to authorities.
If governments were to mandate that such reporting is necessary, it is likely that the enforcement will be on a device/OS level, extending the example set by Apple. Demanding compliance from every single cloud storage provider out there (E2EE or not) would be a sub optimal route for them to take.
My point being, "client side indexing" is not the evil here, and it is unlikely that storage providers will be the ones forced to share data. Your concerns should probably be directed at your operating system.
What iCloud Photos is doing for their client-side scanning is:
(1) Not to your benefit. There is no positive outcome for you from your photos being scanned.
(2) Mandatory if you want to use iCloud Photos.
In contrast, I presume this would be-
(1) Only to your benefit, because all of this derived metadata around scenes and faces would also be encrypted end-to-end as part of the photo library.
(2) Entirely optional.
Increasingly powerful GPU compute being released and constantly improving image recognition models out in the wild. I'd bet there's a nicely packaged, open source solution released in under 3 years.
You will be waiting a long long time for that.
The only way they can do that is client side, and if they go there we are back to the last few weeks discussion of Apple's new client side image scanning shit.
You do not want this service, it seems.
You want a non Google service who can do face recognition, and object/scene detection, but who'll pinky promise you they won't sell you out to advertisers or law enforcement or governments, even though they obviously could.