Google’s latest I/O conference was filled with promises of AI advancements. The company introduced new AI models and showcased their integration of Gemini into every Google product or service. One of the upcoming features, “Ask Photos,” will leverage Gemini AI to simplify navigating Google Photos albums.
Remember when Google Photos first used AI to search for faces and places in your pics? Ask Photos takes that concept and cranks it to eleven with Gemini. It lets you ask natural language questions about your photo library, so you no longer have to scroll endlessly for that perfect vacation pic.
Go to around 5:57 of the video to watch the demo
What can Ask Photos do?
“Often we snap photos to capture memories or save important details, but the information in those photos can get lost in the shuffle,” Google writes in a blog post. Ask Photos will also help you get that information. You can ask it questions about your life, and it will analyze your photos to give you answers. “Gemini’s multimodal capabilities can understand the context and subject of photos to pull out details,” Google writes. “For example, you can ask: ‘What themes have we had for Lena’s birthday parties?’. Ask Photos will understand details, like what decorations are in the background or on the birthday cake, to give you the answer.”
Ask Photos isn’t just about search. If you need help putting together a trip highlight reel, Ask Photos can analyze your photos and suggest the best shots, maybe even write a caption for you. Creativity is questionable if you care about the personal touch and creativity behind your video, though, but that’s a different topic.
How does this really work?
Cracking your question: Ask Photos analyzes your questions and figures out the best way to answer them. It goes beyond keywords, understanding concepts like “themed birthday party.”
Delivering the answer: Next, it analyzes the search results, figuring out which photos best match your question. Gemini’s ability to understand image content helps here.
Learning and safety: Google notes that Ask Photos is still under development, so expect some hiccups. However, they promise that safeguards are in place to ensure responses are safe. It can also learn from your corrections to improve.
What about privacy?
Your photos are personal, and Ask Photos will have to access them all to give you the answers you need. Google acknowledges the personal nature of your photos and assures us that our data is protected.
“Your personal data in Google Photos is never used for ads. And people will not review your conversations and personal data in Ask Photos, except in rare cases to address abuse or harm. We also don’t train any generative AI product outside of Google Photos on this personal data, including other Gemini models and products. As always, all your data in Google Photos is protected with our industry-leading security measures.”
Ask Photos is an experimental program with even more features on the horizon. It should be released soon, but there’s no exact date yet. While it promises a powerful way to interact with your memories, questions about privacy and how this AI tool functions remain. Only time will tell how this shakes out, but for now, get ready to ask your photos anything and see what it can do.
[via Gizmodo]
