In May, Google announced an Ask Photos feature for Google Photos. Powered by Gemini, this feature lets you search for photos using natural language. The feature now appears to be available for some users.
The Ask Photos feature is rolling out to a small number of users who signed up to test it. Right now, only some people in the United States can access it. You don’t need a new version of the Google Photos app either – it’s being added through updates on Google’s servers.
Ask Photos allows you to search your photo library by asking questions. For example, you could say “Show me pictures from Yosemite National Park last year”. Or ask “What was the license plate on my old car?”. You can also include other people to find photos of friends and family.
This kind of search tool uses artificial intelligence (AI) to understand plain English questions. It works by training machine learning models like Gemini. Google’s facial recognition also helps identify who is in photos. Altogether, this should make Ask Photos very helpful for finding specific photos quickly.
Some other tech companies are making similar photo search features too. ASUS has one in their gallery app already. But Ask Photos will be available for almost everyone who uses Google Photos on Android phones. Since more people use Google Photos, Ask Photos could become more advanced over time with more training data.
The Ask Photos rollout only seems to be for a small number of Google Photos users in the US right now. But a full launch will hopefully happen soon worldwide. This new way to search with words instead of tags or dates sounds very useful! More users getting access to Ask Photos would be great news for managing photo libraries easily.
