Google's Ask Photos feature begins US rollout
Google Photos’ AI-powered search tool, “Ask Photos,” will be available to consumers. Originally provided in “early access” to select American consumers before broadening to a larger user base, the function lets users ask the AI to find images using more complicated searches.
Driven by Google’s Gemini AI model, Ask Photos allows users to search their images using natural language queries based on the content and other metadata of each picture. Google Photos users could previously search for certain persons, locations, or objects in their images, but the AI enhancement will let them ask more questions — including some requiring a deeper knowledge of the images.
As Google advised during I/O, for instance, you may ask for the “best photo from each of the National Parks I visited.” Among other things, the AI determines what is the “best” of a given set using a range of signals, including things like brightness, blurriness, and lack of background distortion. It would then find those shot at national parks by combining that with its knowledge of the geolocation of the pictures.
Google stated users would be able to ask questions to get useful replies, therefore using the tool for more than simply picture retrieval alone.
