Google Photos relaunches Ask Photos AI search with faster performance

Google Photos is officially rolling out Ask Photos, its AI-powered search feature, after pulling back beta testing earlier this month due to performance issues. The enhanced version now combines traditional search capabilities with AI functionality to deliver faster results for both simple and complex photo queries.

What you should know: Ask Photos uses Google’s Gemini AI models to understand natural language searches and provide more intuitive photo discovery.

• Users can make conversational queries like “suggest photos that’d make great phone backgrounds” or “what did I eat on my trip to Barcelona?”
• For the Barcelona food query, the AI identifies photo locations, finds food images from that specific trip, and presents them together—eliminating the need to manually search by location or dates.
• The feature was originally revealed at Google I/O 2024 and has been in beta testing since September.

Why the rollback happened: Google temporarily suspended Ask Photos testing after receiving negative user feedback about the feature’s performance shortcomings.

• A Google product manager acknowledged the feature wasn’t “where it needs to be” and cited concerns about “latency, quality and ux.”
• The primary issue was that even simple searches were being processed through Gemini models, significantly slowing down previously fast queries.
• Traditional searches that used to return quick results were experiencing delays due to unnecessary AI processing.

The solution: Google’s updated approach merges the best aspects of Photos’ classic search with AI capabilities to optimize performance across different query types.

• Simple searches like “beach” or “dogs” now return results faster by leveraging traditional search methods.
• Complex, conversational queries still utilize AI processing when the additional intelligence is needed.
• Google stated they’re “bringing the best of Photos’ classic search feature into Ask Photos and improving latency, so you can get fast help with simple and complex queries in one place.”

Current availability: The improved Ask Photos feature is beginning to roll out to users in the United States, though Google hasn’t specified when it will be available globally.