{"id":155780,"date":"2025-06-03T21:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T21:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155780\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T21:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T21:22:12","slug":"google-paused-the-rollout-of-its-ai-powered-ask-photos-search-feature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/155780\/","title":{"rendered":"Google paused the rollout of its AI-powered \u2018Ask Photos\u2019 search feature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google is pausing the rollout of its AI-powered \u201cAsk Photos\u201d feature within Google Photos, which has been slowly expanding since last fall<\/a>. \u201cAsk Photos isn\u2019t where it needs to be,\u201d wrote Jamie Aspinall, a product manager for Google Photos, in a post<\/a> on X responding to criticism, citing three factors: latency, quality, and user experience. <\/p>\n

The experimental feature is powered by Google\u2019s \u201cmost capable\u201d<\/a> Gemini AI models. Specifically, it\u2019s a specialized version of its Gemini models that are \u201conly used for Ask Photos,\u201d according to Google. <\/p>\n

Aspinall said Google had paused the feature\u2019s rollout \u201cat very small numbers while we address these issues,\u201d and that in about two weeks, the team would ship a better version \u201cthat brings back the speed and recall of the original search.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Google also announced Tuesday<\/a> that keyword search in Photos is getting better, allowing you to use quotes to find exact text matches within \u201cfilenames, camera models, captions, or text within photos,\u201d or search without quotes to include visual matches too.<\/p>\n

Google announced the feature last May at I\/O 2024<\/a>, and positioned it as a way to query your Photos app for common-sense questions that another human would typically have to help with \u2014 i.e., asking about which themes you\u2019ve chosen in the past for a child\u2019s birthday party, or which national parks you\u2019ve visited. <\/p>\n

\u201cGemini\u2019s multimodal capabilities can help understand exactly what\u2019s happening in each photo and can even read text in the image if required,\u201d the company wrote in the announcement. \u201cAsk Photos then crafts a helpful response and picks which photos and videos to return.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first time Google has paused the rollout of an AI-powered feature, as it competes in a quickly intensifying AI arms race against other tech giants and startups alike. <\/p>\n

Last May, within weeks of debuting \u201cAI Overview\u201d in Google Search, Google paused the feature after nonsensical and inaccurate answers went viral on social media, with no way to opt out of usage. Two high-profile examples: The feature called Barack Obama the first Muslim president of the United States, and recommended users put glue on pizza<\/a> to keep the cheese on. <\/p>\n

And last February, Google rolled out Gemini\u2019s image-generation tool with a good deal of fanfare, then paused the feature that same month<\/a> after users reported historical inaccuracies, such as an AI-generated image depicting the U.S. Founding Fathers as people of color.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Google is pausing the rollout of its AI-powered \u201cAsk Photos\u201d feature within Google Photos, which has been slowly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,2062,1942,867,49669,12,326,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-155780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-apps","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-google-i-o-2025","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-tech","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114621536287128459","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}