Google Photos Gets New Way to Search, Early Access to “Ask Photos”

There are few apps and services that bring the excitement when they get updates like Google Photos does. It’s like this coming-together event, because no matter your mobile or desktop platform of choice, we all collectively love what Google Photos does for the memories we collect along the way.

So today, there is indeed a couple of noteworthy Google Photos-related announcements. First, Google Photos is getting a “new” and “improved” way to search for both images and videos. And then second, the “Ask Photos” feature that was previewed at Google I/O in May will begin rolling out as early as tomorrow, but it might take a while for you to see it.

GOOGLE PHOTOS NEW SEARCH, SORTING: Google acknowledged today that searching with the correct terms to find just the right photo you are looking for can be difficult. While Google Photos has always had a pretty powerful search, having to focus on searching with proper search terms is not exactly the most user-friendly idea. Instead, Google wants you to be able to search using more natural or descriptive language.

In an update to the way you search on Google Photos, Google says you can now do just that. Searching for something like “Alice and me laughing” or “Kayaking on a lake surrounded by mountains,” are a couple of examples they provided to us. For me, that query might be, “Beer in an outdoor beer garden setting.”

Additionally, when you get search results back, you’ll be able to properly sort them by date or relevance going forward. This seems, well, huge.

This new search will start rolling out right away in English to both Android and iOS users before expanding to more languages “over the coming weeks.”

“ASK PHOTOS” DEBUTS: Does everyone remember “Ask Photos” from Google I/O? This was the Google Photos demo that allowed you to ask very specific questions about past experiences you may have had, with Gemini AI then returning results. Google used examples of, “What’s my car’s license plate number?” because we have all taken a picture of our license plate for use later on. In a more advanced question, Google said you could even do something like ask about your child’s swimming progress, with Google Photos then creating a memory about swimming-related pictures and videos from several stages of the kid’s swimming journey.

In today’s announcement about an initial rollout, Google offers up other examples, like “What did we eat at the hotel in Stanley?” to use AI to look through your photos to find pictures of food you may have taken during a hotel stay. You get the idea.

Those initial queries can be conversational too, so you could follow-up by pushing Gemini in another direction, assuming they weren’t correct out of the gate. You could even ask Gemini to suggest best photos from an event that could then be easily shared in an album. Basically, Gemini is coming to Google Photos as a powerful tool to help you organize, create new things, or just remember the past that you may have forgotten details about.

Google is rolling out early access to “select” users in the US as early as today. They say they want to “get this experience right” before they give it to everyone, so the chances of you seeing it are somewhat slim. You can ask to be a part of it, though!

To join the waitlist to get access to “Ask Photos,” sign-up here.

// Google