Google Photos starts rolling out AI-powered ‘Ask Photos’ following waitlist sign-ups

Ben Schoon | Oct 5 2024 - 4:37 pm PT

Following Google opening a waitlist for access last month, Google Photos is now rolling out “Ask Photos” to some users.

In what appears to be a server-side update for users in the US, as Google previously announced, “Ask Photos” is appearing in the Google Photos app. The AI-powered feature allows for natural-language interactions with your photo library that can include more complex prompts such as asking for Halloween costumes over the years, when your child learned to swim, and more.

Google opened sign-ups for a waitlist for Ask Photos in early September, but is only rolling out the feature now to more users. We’ve seen some limited reports in the past few weeks, but only in the past day have we noticed wider reports as well as had the feature go live on some of our devices.

When the feature becomes available on your account – it works across all of your devices including Android and iOS apps – it appears as a new tab in the Photos app along the bottom bar, replacing the “Search” tab. You can still use classic search, but only after asking the question in Ask Photos first.

On first opening Ask Photos, you’ll be prompted to review how the feature works, what data it has/needs access to, and confirm a few details including ensuring the correct names are attached to people. You also need to set relationships for people and pets, which seems to be sorted by how often those individuals appear in your library.

As for the functionality itself, we’ve noticed that Ask Photos, in our limited testing so far, is best at answering questions that are about people and places, not about events or things.

For instance, asking about when I moved into my house pulled up random pictures from 2013, rather than the images of when I actually moved in a few years ago. But when I asked about when I saw my colleagues, Andrew and Abner, it correctly pulled up the most recent times I’d taken pictures with them. It also correctly found images of when my wife and I drove a boat a few years ago.

But, given many of Google’s examples include things such as finding what food you ate at a specific location or when you did a specific activity at a certain location, it seems to be able to use location data to help narrow the search down. But your results may vary.

The feature isn’t available to all users just yet, but if you signed up for the waitlist sometime in the past few weeks, you’ll probably see Ask Photos pretty soon if you’re not seeing it already.

You can sign up for the waitlist here, and once again, the feature is exclusive to the US for now.