Google Photos to Get AI-Powered “Ask Photos” Feature with Gemini Integration

Google is now starting to inject more of its Gemini AI into many of its products, and the next step in its plans is Photos. At its I/O developer conference yesterday, the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, announced a feature called Ask Photos, which is created to help you find the specific images in your gallery by talking to Gemini.

Gemini AI photo search

The Photos that will be asked for will be in a new tab at the bottom of the Google Photos app. It will initially be available to one subscriber, start in English, and be based in the USA over the upcoming months. When you tap over to the panel, you’ll see the Gemini star icon and a welcome message above a bar asking you to “search or ask about Photos.”

Google claims that you can ask questions like “Show me the best photo from each national park I’ve visited,” which depends on your GPS and requires the AI to decide what is “best.” The company’s CEO, Mrs. Shimrit Ben-Yair for Photos, told Engadget that you can give feedback to the AI and let it know which pictures you like the most. The learning is crucial, Ben-Yair said.

Staged rollout planned

Photos can help you locate your top photos from your latest vacation and create a caption to narrate them so you can easily post them on social media. Once more, if the Gemini pick was not liked, you can also make the adjustments later on.

Until now, you’ll need to type your query to Ask Photos, but voice input is not yet supported. As the feature finally emerges, those who decide to use it will have their current search feature “improved” to Ask. Nevertheless, Google stated that the essential search features, such as face groups or the map view, won’t be gone. 

The company explained three parts of the Ask Photos process: Grasping your question, forming an answer, being cautious, and not forgetting the corrections, which represent the same thing. Though safety is only discussed in the final stage of the project, it should be considered throughout the entire process. The company stated, “The information in your photos is very private, and we are ready to protect it as it is being taken very seriously.”

As a result, queries are not stored anywhere, even if they are processed in the cloud (not on the device). Non-people will not go through the conversations or personal data in Ask Photos, except in rare cases when we must address abuse or harm. Google says it doesn’t train any “generative AI product outside of Google Photos on this personal data, including other Gemini models and products.

Data privacy assurances

Media is still kept secure and private through the same security and privacy measures used by Google Photos. That is a perfect way to use Ask Photos because you can get information such as passport or license expiry dates from pictures you might have taken years ago. The app also employs Gemini’s multimodal features to read the text in images and find answers.

Undoubtedly, AI in Google Photos was not new. Using the company’s facial and object recognition algorithms, you’ve always been allowed to look at the app for things like a “credit card” or a specific friend. Although it may seem like Photos can only deliver images with certain people or items in them, Gemini AI introduces generative processing. Thus, photos can do a lot more.

Apart from the other applications, there are other uses of Photos to tell you what themes you might have used for the last few birthday parties you threw for your partner or child. Coming from Gemini AI, you can see your photos, and it will analyze the themes you have already adopted.

Numerous successful applications exist for Ask Photos, which is now an experimental feature starting to roll out soon.  Like other Photos tools, it might first be a premium feature for One subscribers and Pixel owners and then gradually become available to all who use the free app. At this moment, no one has officially addressed the situation regarding when or if that will happen.