Google pauses 'Ask Photos' rollout, admits it's not ready yet
Google has suspended the rollout of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered "Ask Photos" feature in Google Photos. The move comes after the company acknowledged that the tool isn't up to the mark yet.
Tech Details
Jamie Aspinall, a product manager for Google Photos, mentioned that "Ask Photos isn't where it needs to be," pointing out latency, quality, and user experience as major concerns. The experimental "Ask Photos" feature is backed by Google's most advanced Gemini AI models specially designed for use with Ask Photos.
The feature aims to help users locate specific items in their gallery efficiently. However, issues like missing photos from folders and slow performance have been plaguing Ask Photos.
Improvement Plan
Aspinall mentioned that Google has paused the rollout of the feature "at very small numbers" to address these issues. An enhanced version of "Ask Photos" is anticipated to be released in about two weeks, promising to enhance the speed and recall of the original search function for better efficiency and user-friendliness.
Feature Upgrade
Alongside the suspension of "Ask Photos," Google has introduced an upgrade to keyword search in Photos. Users can now use quotes for exact text matches within filenames, camera models, captions, or text within photos. Search without quotes will include visual matches as well, contributing to Google's efforts to enhance user experience and information retrieval efficiency on its platforms.
Past Issues
This isn't the first time Google has halted an AI-powered feature. The company had previously suspended "AI Overview" in Google Search due to nonsensical and inaccurate answers. Similarly, the image-generation feature of Gemini was also paused after users reported historical inaccuracies in the generated images.
