We all have thousands of photos on our phones. Make each one remarkable and easier to find and share with Google Photos’ latest features.
Google Photos has been around for 10 years now and more than 1.5 billion people use it every month, according to Google. A new feature uses artificial intelligence to take any still image and turn it into a six-second video.
This isn’t the live photo feature you may know, which records a couple of seconds before and after you tap the screen to take a picture. Photo-to-video allows you to take any image saved in your gallery and choose how you’d like it to animate. Right now, there are two choices: “Subtle movements” or “I’m feeling lucky.”
While this feature started rolling out in late July, I’ve yet to find someone with the update in their app. Google’s example shows a photo of a man, and when the user taps “I’m feeling lucky,” the man throws confetti and laughs.
My guess would be the “subtle movements” choice would result in something like the live portraits hanging on the walls at Hogwarts in “Harry Potter.”
This could be a sentimental boost for those older photos of people no longer with us. Imagine that favorite image of grandma coming to life and then being able to show your kids more than just a static image.
AI is also helping people edit photos more easily and get creative with those edits. AI-powered suggestions using different effects will pop up when you decide to edit a photo. And if photographers want to get granular, they can tap specific parts of an image to get suggestions for that area.
If the camera didn’t quite pick up the magnificent blue sky behind your kids hiking, the new editor can make it reappear. Describe what changes you want in a text box and the AI will do its best to generate something in line with your prompt.
Maybe the blue sky isn’t enough for the photo and you want to see a flowing volcano instead. The new editor can do that, too. Google says you can easily change the appearance of objects in photos like grass, skies, trees and home decor.
Does this mean you can ask the editor to remove wrinkles or a few pounds? Not necessarily. Other editing tools included in Google Photos like Magic Eraser or Photo Blur may help in that area. But for now, this Reimagine feature appears to be primarily designed for backgrounds and objects.
Google Photos is limiting the need to head to third-party apps by integrating some of their most popular offerings. Remix can now transform pictures into comics, sketches, anime or even 3D animations with one tap. It only takes seconds for Remix to create the new image and it’s ready to share. This feature is rolling out in the next few weeks.
One of the problems with having thousands of photos on your phone is finding a specific one. Yes, we can search using a word like “beach,” for instance, and every photo with sand will appear. But a new feature called Ask Photos is letting you get more specific.
Last fall, iOS offered users the ability to locate photos using more conversational language using Apple Intelligence. Now Google Photos allows you to do the same and then nudge its AI in the right direction if you need to with extra clues. You could say, “Show photos of me in a bright pink dress” or “Find Amanda at a lake” to narrow down your search.
You can also revisit memories using Ask Photos. For instance, you could say, “Show where we camped last time we went to South Dakota” or “Find what we ate at a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix” and use more descriptive queries. Google says, for best results, to make sure you’ve named faces in the “People and Pet” section.
Shared albums have made all of our lives easier. No more texting or emailing photos from the family reunion or birthday party — just create a shared album to let anyone contribute. Now with Google Photos, you can share those albums with QR codes. Use the app to generate a QR code and use it however you choose. A couple might print it out for a wedding reception so anyone can scan and add photos. Once it’s created, anyone can scan the code with their camera to add or view photos.
All this may sound great, but is AI photo editing available anywhere else? Many of these updated AI-generated features from Google Photos are also available in third-party apps like Adobe Photoshop and Luminar Neo, but they come with a price tag (Google Photos is freely available to anyone with a Gmail account). Photo editors like Canva and Pixlr offer some free AI-enhanced editing as well, but only with limited access; full capability will cost you a monthly subscription.
As with many advancements using artificial intelligence, there are potential ethical concerns to consider. As this technology gets better and better, likely so will deepfakes, misinformation and plagiarism. It could also lead to a greater mistrust in media content and visual presentations from other creators. And as receivers of that information, we should be mindful that seeing isn’t always believing.
While Google Photos is the default photo gallery for Android phones, iPhone users can download the app for free and use it as well. Apple fans should note, though, that many of the features will go to Android users first. Better late than never.