If you struggle remember people, places or even the specific meal you ate on holiday, then fear not – Google Photos is getting two big upgrades that mean it will increasingly act like your AI-powered photographic memory.
The first is a big update to the search function in Google Photos. Google says that, starting from today (September 5), you’ll be able to search your photos in the iOS or Android app using more everyday language, rather than specific keywords.
A few of the examples of the types of phrasing you can use include “Alice and me laughing”, “kayaking on a lake surrounded by mountains” or “Emma painting in the backyard”. In other words, your searches can now be much more conversational and descriptive.
To help you refine your searches further, you’ll also be able filter and sort your searches by date or relevance. Google says this new search experience is rolling out now for English speakers, but will expand to more languages “over the coming weeks”.
But the real glimpse of where Google Photos – and our memories – are headed is the app’s the ‘Ask Photos’ feature. This was first announced at Google IO 2024, but Google has just opened up the waitlist for those in the US – and you can sign up for it on the official ‘Ask Photos’ page.
The Gemini-powered feature (which is currently free doesn’t need a subscription) seemingly understands your photographic history on a much deeper level, letting you effectively treat it as your photographic memory with even more conversational, natural language searches.
For example, you can apparently ask it questions “What did we eat at the hotel in Stanley?” or “Where did we camp last time we went to Yosemite?”, and it’ll rifle through your snaps to hunt down the answer. Clever, and potentially slightly creepy, stuff.
The ultimate argument settler?
There are clearly some privacy concerns around a feature as powerful as ‘Ask Photos’ – in fact, it reminds us a little of the Black Mirror episode ‘The Entire History of You’, where tech records the characters’ audiovisual senses and allows them to relive memories – with mixed results.
Of course, Google isn’t proposing recording your every move, just using AI-powered search to understand your life on a deeper level – and only through the photos you share with it.
Google says that it’s taking a “responsible” approach to launching Ask Photos, and states that that “your data in Google Photos is never used for ads” and is “protected with our industry-leading security measures”.
It adds that in order to improve Ask Photos, “queries may be reviewed by humans, but only after being disconnected from your Google Account to protect your privacy”. In other words, your questions are anonymized and Google confirms that the answers you get from the feature “are not reviewed by humans”.
So while some may understandably have reservations about signing up for a feature that has such a deep insight into their personal life, the considerable flipside is having an AI-powered memory that can help you rediscover forgotten details – or perhaps settle arguments, too.