Google Photos

Google Photos face-grouping feature now rolling out in Europe

Damien Wilde | Aug 22 2019 - 8:09 am PT

Google Photos is rolling out face-grouping to Europe finally after we first saw the feature rollout to some regions way back in 2015 would you believe.

As originally noted by Engadget, the system works by scanning all of the photos in your library to create a snapshot or ‘model’ of each face so that it has the capability to group these similar faces into folders and sub-folders.

Categorizing faces allows for tailored albums and even those little auto-generated movies. Until now, I can confirm that the only times these picked out faces and created a mini-movie was with pets and animals.

The feature has already kind of been available since the release of the Google Nest Hub late last year. The smart display is already capable of matching faces uploaded to Google Photos and displaying them on the screen if you have your albums set as the screensaver. This is just a move into the app on mobile and desktop.

While this does sound like a bit of a privacy problem, Google only makes these ‘face groups’ visible to the account holder — so you. The face-grouping is only used as a way to organize your Google Photos library. If you are worried about your privacy, you can disable the feature.

Doing so will delete all of the face models that Photos has created on your device and remove the face-groups that have already been made. Should the feature not exist or be available on your device just yet, don’t worry as manual face tagging will be coming to Google Photos soon.