In summary
- Ask Photos coming to 100+ more countries
- Europe not included
- Several other new Photos features, but rollout limited
Google is finally bringing its powerful Ask Photos feature to millions more smartphone users – but there’s a catch.
Back in April we reported on a cool new Google Photo feature that employed Gemini to help you find specific photos (or types of photos) through natural language. However, it was US-only at the time.
Now Google is bringing Ask Photos to more than a hundred new countries… but the UK and Europe are not among them. Bummer.
We’ll have to console ourselves with a range of other Google Photos additions that the company has spoken about in a blog post . Though even taking Ask Photos out of the equation, not all of the features will be widely available.
Here’s what to expect from the Google Photos update. Maybe. Eventually.
Ask Photos
Let’s start with the headline feature. Following the update, more people will be able to simply ask Google Photos to find photos using natural language.
Some examples include asking for ‘my photos shot from airplane windows’ or ‘recent selfies’. Photos will duly oblige.
At least, if you’re a Photos user in one of these 100+ countries (covering 17 languages), it will. Us Europeans will have to continue scouring the old fashioned way.
Conversational edits come to iOS
The ability to make edits to your photos using natural language debuted with the Pixel 10 before making its way to all Android phones – in the US. Now it’s making its way to the Google Photos app on iOS – in the US.
We’re really trying not take this personally, Google, but sometimes you make it really difficult.
Personalised edits
This is an addition that Google picked out in its recent Pixel Drop post, and you can see why.
It lets you take a picture of a group of friends and have Photos amend it by referring to the detail and the person. The example used is to say “Remove Riley’s sunglasses, open my eyes, make Engel smile and open her eyes.”
Photos will grab alternative visual data from other photos of those friends (your labelling game needs to be strong for this to work) and apply it.
Nano Banana comes to Photos
Google’s powerful AI image generation and editing model has come to Photos.
Hit “Help me edit” in the editor and describe a new style you’d like for the photo. It’ll reimagine you in a Renaissance portrait fashion, transform a shot into a mosaic, and much more.
AI templates
The editing possibilities with AI are somewhat daunting, so Google has added some assistance. The new Nano Banana-powered Create with AI feature adds ready-made AI templates to the Create tab – “create a professional headshot” being one of the most useful-sounding.
Sounds brilliant! Except – you guessed it – most of us won’t be able to access it yet. It’s only coming to the US and India for now, starting this week.
Ask button
At the risk of confusing us with multiple Ask-related features, Google has added a new Ask button to Photos. Tap this, and you can start an AI conversation about the contents of the image and what you can do with it.
Author: Jon Mundy, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Jon is a freelance journalist who got his start covering mobile games at the dawn of the App Store. He has since covered everything from smart home tech and laptops to food and culture, but always seems to return to his fascination with smartphones.
Recent stories by Jon Mundy:
- Nothing Phone (4a) and Pro get tipped release date
- Xiaomi 17 Ultra European pricing leaks, and it’s good news
- Samsung Galaxy Wide Fold could be a bigger deal than expected
