Google Photos Gets “Ask Photos” AI Search Feature

It’s time to “Ask Photos” instead of search in Google Photos. The new search replacement started showing up over the weekend as a potentially powerful way to bring back old memories, create new collections, and find the story of your life or something. You could even carry on some sort of AI-powered conversation until you get to just the right moment in time, where you pulled out your phone and snapped a pic.

Google first talked about this new “Ask Photos” feature back at Google I/O in May and then told us it would start to roll it out in September to “select” users. They also opened up a sign-up form for those who wanted to show interest in testing early.

The idea here is that finding moments in time in your massive library of photos could be cumbersome. However, with AI powering searches, you would be able to query more conversationally, with follow-ups that could get you very specific info or build out timelines. Google gave us examples of “What did we eat at the hotel in Stanley?” to bring back that memory of a trip you took and the food you ate along the way. You could even do something as specifically important as asking for your car’s license plate number.

Turn on “Ask Photos” in Google Photos: If you’d like to go looking for this feature, the first step is to open Google Photos. For me, it simply showed up after I opened the app over the weekend. There is a setting for it, though, which you’ll find by opening the app, tapping your profile picture and then “Photos settings.” From there, you’ll jump into Preferences>Gemini features in Photos to see a list of AI-powered settings, one of which should be “Search with Ask Photos” – toggle it on to begin.

I happened to be in Vegas when it first showed up for me on Saturday night and I immediately started looking things up. I was having a conversation about last year’s massive ice storm in Portland and then asked about the “ice tree” pictures I had taken. It brought up several images I had of trees that were frozen, including from last year’s storm. I then asked about food pictures I had taken from a Vegas Hell’s Kitchen dinner that Tim and I enjoyed years ago – it found plenty and even described that wonderful meal.

The search isn’t the fastest thing, though. I could see this being useful at times where you want to recount a big memory, but in everyday use, I don’t necessarily need Google Photos to take this much time and provide a worded recap of what it found. Just give me the results, man.

Anyone else seeing it? Thoughts?