Google has temporarily stopped rolling out its AI-powered “Ask Photos” tool in the Google Photos app.
This feature, which has been slowly expanding since late last year, was meant to let users ask natural questions about their photo collection, like which parks they’ve visited or what themes they used for past birthday parties. It uses a special version of Google’s Gemini AI, designed specifically for this tool.
However, Jamie Aspinall, a product manager at Google Photos, said on X (formerly Twitter) that the feature isn’t performing as expected. He pointed out three main problems: slow performance, low-quality results, and a poor overall user experience.
Because of this, the rollout is being paused for now, with the plan to release an improved version in about two weeks. The updated version is expected to be faster and better at finding the right results.
At the same time, Google announced that search within Google Photos is also getting smarter. You can now search using quotes to get exact matches in filenames, camera models, captions, or text that appears in the image. Searching without quotes will still return broader results, including visual matches.
“Ask Photos” was first introduced during Google I/O in May 2024 as a way to make searching your photo library feel more human and helpful. The idea was to go beyond basic keyword searches and use AI to understand what’s happening in each image, including reading visible text.
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