The Google Photos app has been redesigned with AI-powered Memories to help you find the best moments of your life in your everyday photos and videos.
The Memories carousel, which Google says is used by 500 million people each month, was introduced four years ago at the top of the Android and iOS app. It automatically selects what it considers your most important photos and videos, but now Google is making it a more central part of the app.
Starting today in the US (in other regions in “coming months”), the Memories feature moves to the bottom of the app’s navigation bar and gets some handy new tricks. One of them is the ability to “co-create” scrapbooks with friends and family, similar to shared albums.
This feature seems especially useful for big events like weddings, as you’ll be able to invite friends or family to collaborate on specific memories and add their photos and videos to fill in the gaps. You can also save the memories you share with them in your Google Photos account.
Google also promises to add a couple of new features to Memories soon. If you’re having trouble coming up with a title for your photo collection (which we don’t think is a big deal), you can use generative AI to suggest names like “an adventure in the desert.” This is apparently an experimental feature and is only available to “select US accounts” at this time.
Perhaps more useful is the option to share your memories as videos, meaning you can send them to friends and family who aren’t in Google Photos in messaging apps like WhatsApp. Google says it’s “coming soon” but unfortunately hasn’t given an approximate date yet. Knowing Google, it could take anywhere from three months to three years, but we’ll update this article when we know something more concrete.
Google updates the photo album
While these are minor changes to the Google Photos app, they show that Google is increasingly viewing its cloud-based photo service as a social app.
Memories’ ability to “co-create” albums is something millions of people will no doubt use for events such as weddings, holidays, pets, and celebrations. And since Google Photos isn’t used by everyone, the incoming option of sharing memories as videos in WhatsApp groups and other messaging apps should also prove popular.
On the other hand, these AI-powered photo books have also sparked controversy for displaying unwanted memories and photos. Google says its updated Memories view lets you quickly add or remove specific photos or videos, or hide certain memories, to help you with that.
Taken together, the Memories feature is definitely an improvement over having to scroll through a physical photo album, and its AI powers will no doubt improve rapidly if 500 million people continue to use it every month. If it works as well as the demos, it could become an automatic reel of the best moments of your life.