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Google Photos can now recognize your pets

One of Google Photos’ best features is face recognition for easier grouping, search, and sharing with friends and family. Google is now extending that detection and adding naming support for your cats and dogs.

The picture backup and management service has long been able to recognize animals in general and surface them in search results. However, users would not be able to easily find pictures of just their pet and have to rely on general lookup terms like “dog” or “cat.”

That is changing today, with Google Photos now recognizing specific dogs or cats as long as there is a clear shot of their face. Users are able to label them by name and in turn have them treated as people when looking for pictures.

It appears that there is a new combined “People & Pets” section where animals show up. From there, tapping through to those images should feature the ability to “Add a name.”

Other pet-centric features already available in Google Photos include the ability to search by specific cat or dog breed. Additionally, users can search for animals with emoji.

Today’s new features complement Photos’ existing ability to make movies from images of your pets. Since May, some users have been greeted by clips of their pets, but users can also manually make movies by heading to Assistant. Here, they have control over images and the background soundtrack.

The pet recognition and tagging feature is rolling out in most countries starting today.


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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com