Tag: google photos

Google I/O 2024: Google Photos to Get an AI-Powered ‘Ask Photos’ Feature With Intelligent Search Capabilities

Google Photos received a surprise upgrade at the Google I/O 2024 event’s keynote session on Tuesday. The session, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, witnessed several major artificial intelligence (AI) announcements, including new upgrades for Gemini 1.5 Pro, new Google Search features, the introduction of new image and video AI models, and more. Interestingly, the tech giant also unveiled Ask Photos, a new AI-powered intelligent chatbot for Google Photos that makes searching for a particular image in the library easier.

During the event, Pichai highlighted that the company is now creating more powerful search experiences within Google products using Gemini’s capabilities. One such example is Google Photos, which was one of the first platforms by the tech giant to get AI capabilities. Before the new updates, AI tools in Photos could only understand basic keywords and certain subjects, which could be used to help find photos users were looking for. However, with the latest intelligent search tool Ask Photos, this process could get much easier.

Ask AI is powered by Gemini and is fine-tuned as a search engine. It can understand natural language prompts and can read and understand a large number of photos by their subject, background, and even digital information in the metadata. “With Ask Photos, you can ask for what you’re looking for in a natural way, like: “Show me the best photo from each national park I’ve visited.” Google Photos can show you what you need, saving you from all that scrolling,” the company said in a post.

Further, it can also answer questions based on this information. For example, a user can ask about the theme of an office party, and the AI will check the images and share the information. It can even tell the user the colour of the shirt they wore that day. The tech giant claims the AI tool can even perform tasks that go beyond searching and answering queries. The AI can also create a highlight of a recent trip by suggesting top pictures and writing personalised captions for each of them in case the user wants to share it on social media.

Google is also focusing on the privacy of users’ data. Since Ask Photos will be trained on users’ photo galleries, it has access to private and sensitive data. But the tech giant said this data will never be used for ads. The company will also not review these conversations and personal data in Ask Photos unless it addresses abuse and harm. The data will also not be used to train any AI product outside of Google Photos, the company said.

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Google Mulling Gemini AI-Powered Chatbot to Tell Personal Life Stories Using Photos, Search Activity: Report

Google is considering the development of a new chatbot that is capable of telling the story of a user’s life based on their photos and search history, according to a recent CNBC report. The search giant could use large language models (LLMs), such as the recently unveiled multimodal Gemini model, as part of a new AI project. Gemini is touted to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, and Google claims that its top-of-the-line model outperforms its closest competitor on some benchmarks.

A CNBC report that cites internal documents states that one of Google’s AI teams has suggested that the company develop an AI-based technology to use data from users’ smartphones — including photos and their search activity — that will be consumed by an AI-powered chatbot. The project, dubbed Project Ellman, can then use the information to provide answers to “previously impossible questions”, according to the report.

Instead of simply relying on “just pixels with labels and metadata”, Project Ellman would try to spot patterns in a user’s photos, studying photos and memories before and after the image to gain context, according to the report. The company’s internal document also envisions “Ellman Chat” becoming “Your Life Story Teller.”

Google currently collects user’s photos that are stored on the company’s servers as part of its Google Photos backup and sync feature. The company did not specify whether the data source would be from Google Photos synced to the cloud, or whether the images would be processed on the user’s device.

“This was an early internal exploration and, as always, should we decide to roll out new features, we would take the time needed to ensure they were helpful to people, and designed to protect users’ privacy and safety as our top priority”, a company spokesperson told the publication.

It is unclear whether Google is actively working on adding support for such a personalised AI chatbot that relies on its new Gemini AI models, which were unveiled by the company last week. Google’s most powerful model — Gemini Ultra — won’t be available until next year and is capable of outperforming OpenAI’s GPT-4 model in some tests, according to Google.

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Google Photos Rolls Out Photo Stacks, New AI-Powered Document Features to Organise Your Library

Google Photos is getting new AI-based features for organising and categorising photos for users. The search giant has added a new Photo Stack feature for Google Photos that lets users group similar shots together to keep their library free of clutter. Another AI-powered feature will identify and automatically categorise screenshots and documents in the gallery into more albums such as IDs, receipts and event information. In addition, Google Photos now allows users to set reminders on those images to find them at a later date. All these updates are currently rolling out to Android and iOS users.

On Wednesday, Google announced the addition of new AI-backed features to Google Photos via a blog post. The new Photo Stacks feature, as the name suggests, automatically identifies and groups together similar photos of the same subject taken within a short time frame and selects a “top pick” that best captures that moment. Users have the option to manually select their own photo as a top pick. The stacks can be modified or turned off at any time. This functionality is aimed at keeping a user’s library organised and clutter-free.

Further, Google Photos is employing AI to better identify and automatically categorise screenshots and documents. Screenshots will now be grouped into albums like ID, receipts, notes, recipes and menus, social and event information. These albums can be accessed from the Search tab under the new Documents section. This would allow users to quickly find what they need without having to scroll through all the photos.

Google Photos is also bringing a new feature that allows users to set reminders directly from within the Google Photos app itself. With this functionality, you can set reminders in your calendar — from screenshots of a ticket or a picture with text or date information. This can be done by clicking the ” Set Reminder” option and Google Photos will send you reminders based on the details in the screenshot.

Users can automatically archive screenshots and documents after 30 days and this will hide them from the main gallery but keep them accessible from their dedicated albums.

As per Google’s blog, the new Photos features are currently rolling out to users via the Google Photos app on Android and iOS.

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Google Photos Can Now Tag People Even if They Aren’t Facing the Camera: Report

Google seems to have added more capability to its already impressive photo recognition capabilities. The feature comes of use when tagging people in captured photos and Google’s Photos app is usually spot on when it comes to doing the same. A new trick that Google Photos has introduced (on the server end) is to recognise people even though they aren’t facing the camera when the image was captured. It seems to work quite impressively, but it comes with a catch. At the same time, Google has also started adding a new Cinematic photo effect to Photos that was previously an automated feature.

The feature was spotted by Android Authority‘s Rita El Khoury when she started getting suggestions of photos of her husband in the Photos app. Her findings suggest that Google Photos managed to figure out that it was her husband based on the back of his head. This applies not just to newly uploaded photos, but even those that may have been captured years ago and are stored on a user’s Google Photos backup.

Photos does not let users manually tag people whose faces aren’t facing the camera, and this often meant that they had to be manually moved to a vacation or trip folder, so that these could be found easily. Khoury suggests that Google Photos is actually making a model of a person’s face, which has been sourced from various photos and videos in a given library.

Or it could also be the case where Google is using location data or a scene to put it all together and confirm that the person in the photo is the same person who is facing the camera in another using its machine learning skills.

Regardless of how it’s able to do it. It sure is impressive! The user has started seeing old photos getting accurately tagged even though the person’s face isn’t visible in them. And if Photos is unsure, it will simply prompt the user to tag the person manually, which is also nice to have, as it was not possible to tag such images earlier.

Another new Photos feature spotted by Android Police is the ability to add a fake cinematic effect to regular photos. While the cinematic effect of slowly zooming into a photo has been available in Google’s Photos app for a while, users were only sent suggestions or recommendations based on photos that were handpicked automatically by the app itself.

The source reports that the new Cinematic Photo effect seems to be rolling out as a server-side update and appearing for users in the Photos app. The Cinematic Photo effect can be found in the Library tab in Utilities, under the Create new section.

Apple unveiled its first mixed reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro, at its annual developer conference, along with new Mac models and upcoming software updates. We discuss all the most important announcements made by the company at WWDC 2023 on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Google I/O: From Gmail to Maps, Here’s How Google Is Infusing Its Most Popular Products With AI

Google I/O 2023 began on Wednesday as Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai took to the stage to reveal several new changes coming to the company’s apps and services. Google’s annual developer conference for 2023 is focussed on artificial intelligence (AI) technology and the firm announced several new AI-powered features that are coming to services like search, Google Maps, Google Photos, and Gmail. Some of these features will be rolled out to customers in the coming weeks, while some will only be available later this year, Google said, while reiterating its “bold and responsible” approach to updating its products.

The first product from Google that is set to get an AI-backed upgrade is Gmail, the company announced during the Google I/O keynote. The company says it is expanding on its Smart Reply and Smart Compose features, which also rely on AI, into a new tool called “Help me write” that will roll out to Google Workspace users in the coming weeks.

Users can type in a prompt of an email they want to compose, and the tool will use a powerful generative model to quickly pull data from their Google account to generate a personalised email. These drafts can also be refined by the user, or automatically expanded using an “Elaborate” option. These features will start to roll out as part of Workspace updates, according to Google.

Google Photos, first introduced at Google I/O in 2015, has received several AI-powered features over the years that allow users to search for specific objects or people in their photo library. The company also offers a Magic Eraser tool on its Pixel smartphones, allowing users to remove people and objects from photos using AI — users on non-Pixel smartphones can also use this tool, with a Google One subscription.

Magic Editor for Google Photos
Photo Credit: Google

 

A new Magic Editor tool for Google Photos was unveiled on Wednesday, and the company claims it can add missing details in images where objects are partially visible, move subjects in an image after it has been captured, and maintain a consistent look across the image while editing a particular section. Google says Magic Editor for Google Photos will arrive later in 2023.

The company is also adding more AI capabilities to Google Maps, with a new “Immersive View for routes” feature that can give users who are walking, cycling, or driving, a bird’s eye view of the route, along with details of the traffic, air quality, weather, and visual indications of how these might change throughout the day. Google Maps’ new Immersive View for routes will be available in 15 cities — including London, New York, Tokyo, and San Francisco — by the end of the year.

Google’s search app is also getting an upgrade, as is the desktop browser search experience. The company has been scrambling to compete with Microsoft’s upgraded Bing, which runs on OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology. Using Google Bard, the search giant will offer users a conversational AI experience, that has now been opened to all users without a waitlist. The new Google search with generative AI can be enabled via a Labs setting and users can join a waitlist to test all the features offered by Bard-powered Google search, such as smarter shopping and follow up questions.  

Smartphone companies have launched many compelling devices over the first quarter of 2023. What are some of the best phones launched in 2023 you can buy today? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Google Photos Introduces Collage Editor, Revamps Memories Feature: All Details

Google Photos is set to receive an update that will give users access to a range of creative tools including an in-built collage editor, as well as a revamped Memories feature with brand-new cinematic visual effects and music support. The company announced the changes earlier this week. It will be rolled out to users as part of a larger upgrade to Google Photos’ Memories feature, which was first introduced to users in 2019. The search giant also revealed that the Memories feature now has more than 3.5 million monthly views.

The company announced in a blog post that it was revamping its Memories feature that lets users look back at their timeline of older photos through a cinematic audio-visual experience, similar to Stories and Memories on Instagram and Facebook. Google Photos’ Memories will now automatically select and trim the best snippets by utilising machine learning, according to the company.

Google also says that the updated version of its Memories feature will also start to use instrumental music. Meanwhile the service will compile multiple rendered 3D models of still photos with background music in its “Cinematic Photos” visual effect feature.

The still images in Memories will also appear more immersive to users with automatic subtle zooming video effects, according to Google.

Google Photos is also adding support for an inbuilt collage editor called Styles, where users can edit collages through grid arrangement and even add a background. The company says that the Styles feature draws inspiration from old scrapbooks, where graphic art is automatically added to memories in an attempt to make them pop.

Users will also be able to share Memories easily, but the company says that the share feature is currently limited to Android and will soon be rolled out on iOS and the Web.

Google One subscribers and Pixel phone users will also be able to use additional editing features such as Portrait Light or HDR within their collages and access more than 30 additional designs. The launch will feature limited-time styles from featured artists Shantell Martin and Lisa Congdon.

The company also confirmed that users will continue to have control over hiding photos of certain people or time periods from showing up in Memories. The latest update will be rolled out to Google users in a gradually phased manner, according to Google.

Buying an affordable 5G smartphone today usually means you will end up paying a “5G tax”. What does that mean for those looking to get access to 5G networks as soon as they launch? Find out on this week’s episode. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Google Search, Maps, Photos, YouTube Recover Following Outages in Some Parts of the World

Multiple Twitter users are reporting an outage that affects several Google services including the company’s iconic search engine. Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Duo, GMail, and YouTube are some of the other services that users are reportedly experiencing difficulty accessing this morning, according to Downdetector. The issues began at around 6:37am IST when reports of problems began to rise above the baseline and by 7:07am there were over 41,000 such complaints. The affected services started returning to normal by 7:22am but issues seem to have persisted for some users till at least this time, according to the outage tracker. No cause for the disruption has yet been established.

On Twitter, user reactions ranged from amused to surprised, with several users remarking that they had never seen Google Search go down before. Outages were reported anecdotally from across the United States, Australia, and India. Several users posted screenshots showing messages about an internal server error rather than their expected search results. 



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Google Photos to Be Directly Accessible From Gallery App on ChromeOS for Easy Editing: Report

Google is reportedly planning to better integrate Google Photos on ChromeOS in order to offer a better media editor by adding a convenience feature. The integration will help ChromeOS users perform more advanced edits with the new addition of Google Photos. Earlier, users had to manually open Google Photos and look for media files they wished to edit. Now, the new option in the editor area is expected to allow users to open a selected image or video in the full-featured Android version of Google Photos.

According to a report from 9To5Google, the technology giant, Google is planning to add handy features to Google Photos to make a better editor available on ChromeOS. The said integration of Google Photos to make an editor with more features is aimed at allowing users to perform more advanced edits on images and videos.

The new option in the editor area of the current Gallery application will reportedly allow users to open a selected image or video in the fully-featured Android version of the Google Photos application. From there, users can access the advanced editing features of the app including, white point, black point, skin tone, and vignette.

The said features were accessible on Chromebooks earlier as well, but now users will have the option to directly open the selected media files on Google Photos and edit them. Earlier, users had to manually open Google Photos and find the media file they wish to edit. Hence, this makes the minor new addition a convenience feature. This feature will also users to make choices between the two editors, they can opt for the Gallery app editor for minor edits and the Google Photos app for advanced edits.

Apart from this, recently Google was also planning to take a stronger approach to tackle the spam notifications on its web browser, Google Chrome, according to a recent report. It is expected that a new code change will allow Google to block a website from sending spam notifications.

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Google I/O 2022 Starts Today: How to Watch, What to Expect

Google I/O 2022 is kicking off today, and just like the past years, you can watch its livestream. The Google I/O 2022 keynote featuring Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and his core team, is expected to bring the key announcements, such as the launch of new hardware including an affordable Pixel phone as well as advancements and improvements coming to Android and Wear OS. Shortly after the main keynote, Google will hold a developer-focussed keynote where we are expected to see some detailed information about the company’s prime software updates.

How to watch Google I/O 2022 livestream in India and around the world

Google I/O 2022 will take place as a two-day event, starting with the keynote that will begin at 1pm ET (10:30pm IST) today. The developer-centric event will be held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California. However, Google will livestream the conference for its worldwide audience. The event — including the main keynote — will be livestreamed through Google’s social media channels. While the keynote will be livestreamed for all, developers who want to virtually attend specific sessions and the developer-focussed keynote following the main keynote need to register on the Google I/O site.

You can watch the Google I/O 2022 keynote live from the video embedded below.

What all to expect at Google I/O 2022

Just like past years, this year’s Google I/O conference will detail the company’s latest developments towards its operating systems including Android and Wear OS. The rumour mill has also suggested that we could see some hardware-focussed announcements at the event.

Android 13
At Google I/O 2022, we can expect Google to explain its new advancements and improvements in Android 13. The operating system, which is the successor to last year’s Android 12, received its first developer preview in February. It is likely to get an Apple-like spatial audio feature for Pixel 6 models as well as two carrier connections on a single eSIM, per previous reports.

Wear OS
In addition to Android 13, Wear OS is likely to get an update with a list of enhancements and improvements that we can expect at this year’s Google I/O. Google last year announced its partnership with Samsung for integrating Tizen within Wear OS. We could see some new moves at that end.

Pixel 6a
At this year’s I/O keynote, Google is expected to repeat its 2019 take and unveil the Pixel 6a as its new affordable smartphone. The phone is speculated to have Google’s Tensor chip — similar to the existing Pixel 6 models. It is also expected to have the Pixel 6-like back design, a retail box surfaced online has suggested. The new Pixel phone may, however, lack some of the features that were exclusive to the Pixel 6 series. Normally, Google uses its I/O conferences to detail software and Web technologies, though it did make a change in 2019 when it announced the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL as its two affordable smartphones.

Pixel Watch
Alongside the Pixel 6a, the Pixel Watch is expected to debut at Google I/O 2022 keynote later today. The rumour mill has suggested that Google is working on its own smartwatch hardware for some time. It is speculated to have a circular design and run the latest Wear OS version. It could also come with a Fitbit integration for enhanced fitness tracking support.

Pixel Buds Pro
Google is tipped to launch the Pixel Buds Pro alongside the Pixel 6a and Pixel Watch at this year’s I/O keynote. The new truly wireless stereo (TWS) earbuds by the Android maker are said to be available in Carbon, Fog, Limoncello, and Real Red colours.

Google Assistant improvements
This year’s Google I/O is also expected to bring some new improvements to Google Assistant — to make it a better option against Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. There could also be some enhancements specifically to uplift your smart home experience.

Google Search advancements
At the I/O 2022 keynote, Google is expected to announce some of its tweaks to improve search results. These changes are expected to leverage the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning advancements.

Other updates
If we go by the historical records, Google is likely to announce updates to Google Maps, Photos, and Gmail at this year’s I/O conference. We may also see the company bringing back its Wallet app to complement Google Pay. Furthermore, there could be some special announcements around Google’s plans to work on Web 3 and develop next-generation apps and experiences for metaverse.

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