Summary
Earlier this month, Google paused the “Ask Photos” feature in Google Photos after people complained about poor results and slow speed. It’s been a few weeks now, and the feature is rolling back out. If you still don’t like it, the feature can easily be disabled.
The idea of “Ask Photos” is that you’re supposed to be able to find photos in your library with natural language prompts. For example, you could say, “Show me the best photos from my trip to Traverse City,” which requires location awareness and some judgment." Or something like, “What did we eat on our trip to Detroit?” and it would pull up photos you took of food while located in the city.
The functionality isn’t entirely different than what has existed in Google Photos for a while now. The food prompt, for example, is nothing new. You could search with a basic phrase like “food in Detroit,” and it would give you the same results. The infusion of Gemini AI is more for the types of queries that require more complex “thought” and “judgment.”
When “Ask Photos” rolls out to your device, you’ll notice the “Search” tab is replaced with an “Ask” tab. One of the primary complaints—and the reason whyGoogle paused the initial rollout—was about how long it took for results to appear. To solve that, Google Photos will first deliver results with the traditional search, then the Gemini results will appear as the “Best Match” after processing.
Thankfully, if you prefer the traditional search results, it’s now easier to disable the Gemini results entirely from the Settings. Tap your profile icon in the top corner and go to Photos Settings > Preferences > Gemini Features in Photos. There are a few options here, but the main one to disable is “Search with Ask Photos.”
In order for the “Ask Photos” feature to appear on your account, you must be 18 years or older, in the U.S., account language set to English (United States), and have Face Groups enabled. This is a server-side switch, so you can’t get it by updating the app.
