Google Photos users who have trouble finding specific photos just through simple keywords will appreciate a couple of new innovations hitting the service. On Thursday, Google announced an improvement to the classic search that lets you use descriptive queries to hunt down specific photos and videos and get better results.
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“As photo libraries get larger and larger, finding what you’re looking for sometimes requires more descriptive queries,” Jamie Aspinall, Group Product Manager for Google Photos, said in a Thursday blog post. “Starting today, you can find what you’re looking for using everyday language.”
Aspinall cited a few examples: You could ask Google Photos to find photos of “Alice and me laughing,” “Kayaking on a lake surrounded by mountains,” or “Emma painting in the backyard.” In response, Google will scan for and analyze photos to find the ones that match your query.
The new search feature will also sort your results by date or relevance, helping you find the right ones more quickly and easily. The feature is currently rolling out in English to Android and iPhone users but will expand to more languages over the next few weeks.
And there’s another enhancement coming to Google Photos. A new feature called Ask Photos will attempt to move beyond traditional search with the help of AI. Using Google’s Gemini AI, Ask Photos will be able to understand the context of the photos in your gallery, including details like the people in your life, your hobbies, and your favorite foods.
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As the name implies, Ask Photos will answer actual questions about your photos. Aspinall offered this example: maybe you’re planning a camping trip and want to return to a favorite site that you captured in your photos. You could ask Google Photos: “Where did we camp the last time we went to Yosemite?”
In another example, maybe you’d like to return to a restaurant you’ve enjoyed in the past and want to order the same food. Assuming you snapped photos of your meal, you could ask Google Photos: “What did we eat at the hotel in Stanley?”
In these two examples, Ask Photos delivers the right results based on its understanding of the key details in your photos. In these cases, the AI-powered feature “knows” where you took the photos with your camping gear and what dish was on the table when you snapped a picture at the restaurant.
With its AI skills, Ask Photos can also engage in a back-and-forth conversation. So if it doesn’t find the correct results right away, you can chat with it to provide more clues and details to help it along.
Google initially unveiled Ask Photos in May at its I/O 2024 event. At the time, the company said the feature would roll out to Google Photos users later in the summer, with more capabilities to come.
For now, Ask Photos is strictly experimental, rolling out Friday only to select US users as part of its Google Labs testing environment. Aspinall said that Google wants to make sure it gets the feature right before launching it broadly to all users.
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Of course, privacy is always a concern, both with AI and with Google. To address privacy concerns, Aspinall said that Google is “taking a responsible approach to launching Ask Photos, guided by our AI Principles.” In part, this means the company promises that your photos will be protected by security measures and will never be used for ads.
To improve Ask Photos, humans may review some queries but only after you are disconnected from your Google Account. The actual answers offered by Ask Photos, including your photos and videos, are not reviewed by humans unless you provide feedback or want to address issues of abuse or harm.
Those of you who’d like to take Ask Photos for a spin can now join the waitlist. Browse to the Google Photos page and head to the Ask Photos section. Enter your Gmail address and click the Join the waitlist button.
