Nearly a year after unveiling its Ask Photos feature at the I/O developer conference in May 2024, Google has finally shed some light on how the feature will work. It was introduced as an extension for Google Photos which allows the on-device Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) assistant to access a user’s images and answer queries about them. While the feature started shipping out in early access in September last year, the company has now confirmed the details about its availability and workings.
Gemini-Powered Ask Photos Feature: How Does It Work?
According to a new support document published by Google, the feature is available on both Android and iOS platforms. It requires users to have Gemini and Google Photos apps installed, and have Gemini Apps Activity (formerly Gemini Extensions) enabled. Further, the Gemini app should have the same account logged in as the Photos app. Once done, the feature is ready for usage.
The Mountain View-based tech giant says users can ask the Gemini app to find a photo in the Google Photos library. They can include @Google Photos or my photos in their prompt to ensure that Gemini uses the Google Photos app. It works with prompts such as:
- Find my photos of Alex
- Show my photos from last summer
- Show me recent selfies
- Show my photos from my most recent trip
- Find my photos of landscapes
In essence, the Gemini integration in the Photos app lets users ask conversational queries to filter out a specific image stored on the user’s cloud storage. They can ask detailed queries spanning multiple sentences or natural language prompts with some basic information about the image, enabling the AI to fetch the right image. They can also ask follow-up queries in case the AI is not able to find the image in the first attempt.
Users can ask questions based on their face groups or relationships saved in the Photos app, the location or date the photo was taken, a description of what’s in the photo, or their current conversation with the Gemini mobile app.
