Google is starting to roll out its AI-powered Ask Photos feature to some users

After Google opened a waiting list for access last month, Google Photos is now offering an “Ask for Photos” option to some users.

In what appears to be a server-side update for US users, as Google previously announced, an “Ask Photos” option is coming to the Google Photos app. The AI-powered feature allows you to interact with a natural language photo library that can include more complex suggestions, such as requests for Halloween costumes over the years, when your child learned to swim, and more.

Google launched sign-ups for the Ask Photos waitlist in early September, but is now rolling out the feature to more users. We’ve seen some limited reporting over the last few weeks, but it wasn’t until the last day that we noticed broader reporting and made the feature available on some of our devices.

Once the feature becomes available on your account – it will work on all your devices, including the Android and iOS apps – it will appear as a new tab in the Photos app in the bottom bar, replacing the “Search” tab. You can still use classic search, but only after asking a question in the Ask Photos section.

The first time you open Ask Photos, you’ll be asked to check how the feature works, what data it has/needs access to, and to confirm a few details, including making sure people have the correct names assigned to them. You also need to set relationships between people and animals, which appear to be sorted by how often those people appear in your library.

In terms of functionality itself, we found that in our limited testing, Ask Photos does best at answering questions about people and places, rather than events or things.

For example, asking about when I moved in brought up random photos from 2013, not when I actually moved in a few years ago. But when I asked when I saw my friends Andrew and Abner, it correctly displayed when I last took photos with them. We also found images of when my wife and I were on a boat a few years ago.

However, given that many of Google’s examples include things like checking what food you ate in a certain place or when you performed a certain action in a certain place, it seems that Google could use location data to narrow down searches. But your results may vary.

This feature isn’t available to all users yet, but if you’ve signed up to the waitlist in the last few weeks, you’ll likely see the Ask for Photos option soon if you don’t see it already.

You can sign up for the waiting list here. This feature is only available in the US for now.

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