I hated Google Photos’ AI search, but after the last update I love it

At Google I/O 2024, Google introduced the world to “ask photos.” There was a new Gemini-run search experience for Google images that would enable you to use natural language to easily find images in your library. The course sounded good and as a legitimate good use of AI.

Unfortunately, the images’ implementation asks fell short. I have used ask pictures for the last few months, and in almost all scenarios, It has been significantly worse than the old search experience. Between slow loading times and a really unintuitive user interface, ask images have done searching for things in Google images terribly frustrating.

Previously, Google Photo’s search experience was mainly divided into two versions. If you used Ask images, you will get answers to your search or question with a handful of photo results in a bizarre, horizontal rolling list. You can press the “Show more” button below to see more results in a vertical list, or press “Use Classic Search” at the top of the page to perform the same search using Google Photo’s standard search tool.

The first results in the horizontal list were often too limited, while the “Show more” option showed a long list of several images in a seemingly random order without organization. The classic search still worked well, but there was no way to change it as the standard option over asking images, which made it far more complicated to access than it should have been.

With this new version of Ask images, Google has mainly taken the old version of the feature and combined it with the classic Google Photos search to create one, much more intuitive search experience.

In the old ones ask pictures screens above, there is a gemini-written answer and a horizontal list of about a dozen images under it. Tapping “Show more” shows more pictures of my dog, but they are in a randomized order that I have no control over. If I want a structured list of results, I need to press “Use Classic Search”, which takes me to a separate page to see my pictures that way.

In comparison, the new Ask images highlight “Best Match” images at the top of the screen, accompanied by the same Gemini answer below. You can tap to see more of the “best matches” images, or just start scrolling to see a reverse chronological list of images matching your keyword – just as the classic search did. There is also a Checkmark button to select all images from a given date, as well as a drop -down arrow showing other photos from that day.

Now, instead of having two distinctly separate pages of search results, the new ASK images show both Gemini AI results and classic search results on the same page. It is so much cleaner and so much more practical.

Although it is the biggest and best change, there are other adjustments I also love.

When searching for something in the new Ask images, it originally shows the reverse chronological list of images and then shows a “writing response” load before it spits out the best match results and AI summaries. If you do not care about these things, you can press the stop button next to “writing answers” to keep the Gemini things out of the search results. Furthermore, simple search questions (such as searching the name of a person or pets) come with an AI-written summary at all.

And if you want to go a step further, you can even disable Gemini from ever showing up in your searches. To do that, press Your profile icon top right and then Photo settings – Preferences – Gemini features in photos.

After spending a day with this new version of Ask images, I am seriously impressed with how well it works and just as confused about why this is not Google initially sent.

Where the old ones ask images felt like a bad experiment that just made Google images worse, this improved version feels like a legitimate upgrade, not just over the old Ask images, but also over the classic search.

Is it perfect? I’m not sure if I would go that far. Load times can sometimes be a little slower than I want, and some of the suggested search questions (namely “Write a Poem about me”) are just stupid. But compared to what we had before, this is undoubtedly better.

Google says The new Ask images “start rolling out to more qualified users in the United States”, so it may still be a bit before it’s live on the phone. But I hope you get it soon, because it has taken one of the worst aspects of modern Google images and made it one of the best.