After Google temporarily suspending the deployment of its buggy AI-powered Ask Photos feature in Google Photos, the company announced that it has improved the ability to return search results quickly.
The AI feature first introduced last year at Google's I/O Developer Conference allows users to search across their entire collection of digital photos using natural language queries. Tap AI powers when leveraging Google's Gemini to understand photo content and other metadata.
However, users complained that AI features are unreliable and that responses often slow while AI is “thinking.”
Addressing these concerns, Google Photos Product Manager Jamie Aspinall wrote to X in early June that “we don't ask photos in terms of incubation period, quality, or UX,” and that the rollout would be paused for several weeks while Google pushed to regain the “speed and recall of original searches.”
In a short blog post published Thursday, Google said it is taking the best photos for photos that ask for classic search features for photos, especially for easy searches such as “beach” and “dogs.” This could potentially make your search results appear more quickly, as classic searches did previously.
Meanwhile, AI works in the background, finding the most relevant photos and answering more complex queries.
For example, searching for a photo of “White Dog” will immediately display a set of initial search results. Once AI finishes the analysis, the results will be displayed below, along with introductory text that may identify the dog by name, and let us know when the animal photo first appeared.
The interface allows you to switch to Classic Search if necessary.
As a result of these changes, Google has resumed rolling out question photos for more people across the US
Question To be eligible to use the photo, you must be 18 years of age or older and your account language must be set to English. You must also enable Face Group, a feature that labels people and pets found in the Google Photos Library.