Google Pauses ‘Ask Photos’ AI Rollout for Refinement

On June 3, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) quietly paused the rollout of its ‘Ask Photos’ AI search feature, which had been gradually expanding since last fall. Jamie Aspinall, a product manager for Google Photos, stated on X that the feature isn’t where it needs to be due to issues with latency and user experience, and so the rollout has been paused for a very small number of users while these issues are addressed. An improved version, aiming to restore the speed and recall of the original search, is expected to be shipped in approximately two weeks.

Google Pauses 'Ask Photos' AI Rollout for Refinement

A user’s hands typing a search query into a Google Search box, emphasizing the company’s search capabilities.

The ‘Ask Photos’ feature, which Google first announced at its annual Google I/O developer conference in May 2024, is powered by a specialized version of Google’s Gemini AI models that are exclusively used for this feature. It allows users to search their Google Photos libraries using natural language prompts, such as asking for a sample of one great photo from each visit to a National Park. Google stated that Gemini’s multimodal capabilities are designed to understand precisely what is in each photo.

This is not the first instance of Google pausing the rollout of an AI-powered product to correct issues. In May 2024, shortly after debuting ‘AI Overview’ in Google Search, the company temporarily halted the feature due to widespread reports of nonsensical and inaccurate answers going viral, such as erroneously calling Barack Obama the first Muslim president and suggesting users put glue on pizza. Similarly, in February 2024, Google paused Gemini’s image-generation tool shortly after its launch following user reports of historical inaccuracies, such as AI-generated images depicting US Founding Fathers as people of color.

Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) offers various products and platforms in the US, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Canada, and Latin America. It operates through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.