Artificial intelligence (AI) stole the spotlight at Google I/O today with a series of exciting announcements. One of the standout features revealed is "Ask Photos" for Google Photos, powered by Google’s advanced AI model, Gemini. This feature allows users to search through their photos and ask questions using everyday language.
Ask Photos goes beyond just simple searches. For example, instead of just looking for pictures of your watches, you can ask it to find a photo of your first day at the college. It can understand this and return one or more photos of your first day at the college. Moreover, if you ask for photos of your college days, it understands the entire process and will show you photos from the first day to when you receives the graduation certificate. This shows that Gemini can grasp complex contexts and relationships between photos.
Another impressive feature is the ability to search for vacation photos. Users can ask the AI to find pictures of specific landmarks from their trips. This feature can even recognize and find pictures containing your license plate number. During the event, Google’s CEO asked the AI, "What's my license plate number again?" The Photos app accurately returned his license plate number, using factors like location data and frequency of appearances.
While some might find this level of AI capability a bit unsettling, it highlights just how advanced Google’s Gemini model is. This tool can significantly help people sift through the massive number of photos they have stored in Google Photos. The ability to use natural language to find photos is a major step forward. It means that users don’t need to remember exact dates or descriptions, making the search process much more intuitive and user-friendly.
Google's focus on AI isn’t limited to just Photos. The company has been integrating AI into nearly all its products. This trend is part of a broader push towards "multi-modality" input, where AI can handle text, audio, and video inputs seamlessly. OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4o already showcased this with its new model, which has set high expectations with its ability to process different types of media inputs.
The competition in the AI field is heating up. Google’s ongoing investment in AI is a strategic move to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving landscape. OpenAI's recent advancements with its Omni model are a testament to the fierce competition. Next month, Apple is expected to reveal its own AI initiatives at its Worldwide Developer Conference, adding another player to the growing AI arena.