Tl; Dream
- Ask Photos is a Google Photo feature designed to answer questions about the content of your photo library.
- While it was announced on Google I/O 2024, access over the past year has been extremely limited.
- Earlier this month we heard that the rollout was paused while Google worked to address a few problems, but today it is back on the field.
Over the past couple of years, AI has changed the way we do many things, and although there is certainly no lack of controversial use of technology, there are also some places where it just makes every sense in the world. Back at I/O 2024, Google announced one of the truly smart-sounding use cases, with Ask pictures For Google images that promise to make your giant archive with images that are actually useful by letting you search through it using natural language. After a very bumpy year, it finally sounds like Ask images are now ready to live up to the potential.
By 2025, it began to become clear that something was wrong, and earlier this month, Google Photo’s Product Manager Jamie Aspinall confirmed that Scrolling of Ask images are paused. Aspinall was surprisingly honest about the battles the service faced, and admitted incorrectly “when it comes to latency, quality and UX.” Although it was unfortunate to hear, he also teased that a much improved iteration of Ask images was just around the corner.
While Aspinall predicted we would see asks pictures come back in about two weeks, it has been a little over three now, and today Google Confirms that Ask images are back on track.
As of now, access to the early testers is expanding, and Google says that “more” qualified images users in the United States should access. It suggests to us that Google is still a little cautious about placement, but hopefully everyone who is interested will have a chance to try it soon.
We also hear about some new functionality, and it sounds like Google prepared this especially to solve some of the speed problems we had seen expressed to ask pictures earlier. The app basically combines classic search with this gemini-driven upgrade to basically surface some widely relevant results, while Gemini continues to crush the query in the background. That means you get to see at least some pictures right away, instead of feeling like you’re waiting forever to ask pictures.
When you are able to try it yourself, let us know in the comments if it was worth waiting for.