Google has opened up early access to its pioneering AI-powered “Ask Photos” feature and announced a massive update to Google Photos search for everyone else.
Google Photos: How To Gain Early Access To Ask Photos
As revealed in a new official blog post, Google is today opening up a waitlist for users eager to try out its new AI-powered Ask Photos feature, announced at Google I/O 2024 this May. According to Google, the feature will be available initially to “select users” based in the United States only. Eligible users can sign up for the Ask Photos waitlist today.
Ask Photos goes beyond the current Google Photos search experience by leveraging the company’s Gemini AI models to understand the context of your photo library. This means it can infer “big picture” information from the contents of your photos and videos, such as the relationships between people or your favorite hobbies and foods.
More importantly, interacting with Ask Photos is more like chatting with a personal assistant who can access your photos. It doesn’t just find pictures for you; it will also answer questions about them and use them to generate new output.
In one example, a Google Photos user asks, “What did we eat at the hotel in Stanley?” Ask Photos responds, “You and Oli enjoyed a meal of salmon and beef at the Sawtooth Hotel in Stanley.”
To be able to answer this question, Ask Photos needs to find images of food taken at a hotel in Stanley, recognize the types of food in the picture and look at other photos taken at the same time to determine who you were with.” According to Google, you’ll also be able to ask follow-up questions, just as you would in a conversation with a real person. Ask Photos can also perform typical AI chatbot tasks such as summarizing results, providing “top ten” lists, or helping pick the best photos from an album.
Google Photos Improves Searching For Everyone
For those unable or unwilling to use Ask Photos, Google has also improved the regular search function within Google Photos by allowing “more descriptive” queries in place of simple keywords. Starting today, you’ll can to search your library for photos and videos by using natural descriptive language, such as “Alice and me laughing”, “Kayaking on a lake surrounded by mountains” or “Emma painting in the backyard.”
Furthermore, you can sort your search results by “Most recent” or “Best match,” making it easier to find the particular images you want without having to scroll through potentially years’ worth of results. I wrote more about this function when it was discovered as an unreleased feature last month.
The example below shows search results for “Emma painting in the backyard” sorted by best match:
Google’s improved Google Photos search function is now rolling out in English to Android and iOS users, with more languages promised “over the coming weeks.”
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