In a significant update, Google Photos has revealed that it has improved the “Ask Photos” feature’s ability to rapidly return search results, which was previously paused.
Alphabet-owned announced that the AI feature, originally launched at Google’s I/O developer conference last year, allows users to browse across their collection of digital photos leveraging natural language queries.
Using Google’s Gemini, “Ask Photos” taps into the AI’s capability to comprehend a photo’s content when responding to input.
However, users raised privacy concerns about the AI-powered feature and were usually slow to respond while the AI was “thinking.”
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Google Photos Product Manager Jamie Aspinall addressed these concerns earlier in June, stating, “Ask Photos isn’t where it needs to be, in terms of latency, quality and UX,” and noted the rollout would be paused for a couple of weeks while Google worked to bring back the “speed and recall of the original search.”
On Thursday, in a short blog post, Google announced the roll out of the best of Photos’ classic search feature into Ask Photos, especially designed for simple searches, enabling the search results to show more quickly.
Meanwhile, the AI will run in the background to browse the most pertinent images and clear your queries within a blink of an eye.
The interface enables you to switch to classic search if you prefer. As a result of these modifications, the company has resumed the launch of Ask Photos to a broader audience in the US.
