Google’s move has caught the eyebrow of the tech community, and decided to pause the launch of its highly anticipated AI-powered “Ask Photos” feature in Google Photos.
Ask a Photo, originally launched as an experimental feature, leveraging Google’s Gemini AI model to provide users with an innovative way to search their photo gallery by asking natural language questions.
The feature has been slowly rolling out to a group of users, designed to allow individuals to query their photo collections to understand specific topics, events, or text-based elements.
However, product manager Jamie Aspinall revealed that the feature temporarily backed off after feedback, citing issues of latency, quality and overall user experience.
After a lot of criticism from users, Aspinall wrote on his X handle: “Ask where the photo is not needed.”
The product manager confirmed that the launch of the feature will be suspended to “few users” when the team resolves its concerns.
Aspinall stressed that a more refined version will be available in about two weeks, which will restore the speed and accuracy promised for the initial launch.
The pause comes after more and more censorship of AI-driven capabilities, and Google’s “Ask Photos” is no exception.
Powered by the latest version of Gemini AI, a specialized model designed specifically for this feature, “ask Photos” promises to understand and interpret the content of a photo, including text in the image, to generate context-sensitive results.
However, as Aspinall points out, performance must be improved to ensure a seamless user experience.
In addition to the pause of “Greeting Photos”, Google has also issued an announcement aimed at improving overall search capabilities in Google Photos.
From now on, users can perform more accurate searches by using quotes to find exact text matches in file names, camera models, subtitles, and even text embedded in photos.
Additionally, when quotes are not used, the search results will now include visual matches.
This update extends the features announced at Google I/O 2024 earlier this year, representing the evolution of how Google Photos interacts with users.
By combining multimodal AI capabilities, Google’s goal is to make photo searches more intuitive and user-friendly, providing results that include text and visual context.
Google’s decision to pause “ask for photos” comes amid rapidly growing competition in the AI space, where tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and Startups are all competing to develop breakthrough new features.
Google’s move to pause its AI-driven capabilities is not unprecedented, as the company previously took similar actions when identifying flaws in its new technology.
For example, after launching the AI Overview feature in Google Search last May, Google was forced to stop its launch after sharing multiple ridiculous and inaccurate answers on social media.
Earlier this year, Google’s Gemini dynamic image generation tool also faced setbacks.
According to The Verge, this happened after a series of reports highlighted historically inaccurate reports in generated images, such as portraying our Founding Fathers as people of color, a feature similarly paused to address these issues.
Despite the pause, the core vision behind “Ask Photos” remains intact: leveraging the growing capabilities of AI to enhance the way users interact with photos and videos.
By enabling users to ask natural language questions, the feature attempts to change the way image libraries are organized and searched, providing more human-like interactions than traditional keyword searches.
Google has not announced a return to the exact schedule of “ask for photos” or other details on how the updated version will improve on the current drawbacks.
However, the company remains committed to refining the feature based on user feedback and further advances in AI technology.
