Google Photos has resumed rolling out its AI-powered “Ask Photos” feature after a pause to fix speed and reliability issues.
The problem: users found the AI slow and glitchy when searching photos with natural language. The feature taps Google’s Gemini AI to identify photos by content and metadata but lagged too much.
Google Photos product manager Jamie Aspinall confirmed the pause on X earlier this month: 
“Ask Photos isn’t where it needs to be, in terms of latency, quality and ux,”
“…rollout would be paused for a couple of weeks while Google worked to bring back the ‘speed and recall of the original search.’”
The fix: Google is blending the original, faster search for simple queries like “beach” or “dogs” with the AI handling complex searches in the background. This lets you get instant results while the AI fetches refined ones.
For example, searching “white dog” brings quick photo matches first, then AI results with details like your dog’s name and when photos first appeared.
Users can switch back to classic search in the interface if preferred.
The updated rollout is live across the U.S. now. To use Ask Photos, you must be 18+, have your account language set to English, and have Face Groups enabled to recognize people and pets.
Read Google’s full update on their blog.
