Back in 2019, Google made waves with its announcement about leveraging machine learning to organize Google Photos for all of us. Since then, Memories—collections of past photos and videos—have steadily emerged, offering a delightful way to revisit cherished moments. This week, Google is taking Memories to the next level by unveiling a fresh section within the Photos app, dedicated to viewing content meticulously curated by AI.
Google characterizes the new Memories view as a dynamic ‘scrapbook-like timeline.’ Upon launching the Photos app on your mobile device, you’ll instantly spot a novel Memories shortcut in the navigation bar. This section features AI-generated Memories, designed to showcase content you’d genuinely love to relive. Unlike conventional Memories carousels that may include duplicate images, this revamped experience highlights content that revolves around individuals or events from specific time frames.
As always, you retain the option to conceal certain people or periods, or even disable the feature altogether. You can save individual AI-crafted Memories to the view, alongside your manually created ones. Furthermore, you’re empowered to remove specific photos and videos from your Memories.
An intriguing experimental feature, currently accessible solely to select US-based Google account holders, enables users to employ generative AI for photo organization. While renaming Memories, you can trigger the ‘Help me title’ button to receive AI-generated suggestions. If none of the suggestions align with your vision for the carousel, you can utilize the ‘Add hint’ option to offer guidance to the AI, refining the results.
In a bid to enhance sharing options, Google has also introduced new collaboration features. You now have the ability to invite other Google account holders to contribute content to Memories. These invited contributors can incorporate the Memories carousel into their personal view. Google’s future plans include a sharing feature that will enable users to transform Memories into shareable videos, suitable for social media and messaging platforms. Moreover, the app already facilitates direct sharing of photos with others.
The evolution of Memories has been a long-standing journey, with Google consistently adding fresh collections like the annual ‘Year in Review,’ which summarizes the year’s events. This feature allows you to traverse through photos taken throughout the year or navigate to specific timeframes as you explore. Google even facilitates the creation of a photo book based on the collection and suggests additional photos to complement it.
This latest enhancement to the Memories feature closely follows Google’s recent testing of UI adjustments last month. Screenshots of these changes, including a floating navigation bar and the relocation of the Sharing icon, were shared by the Google News Telegram channel among a limited group of Google Photos users.
The new Memories view is currently accessible to users of the Google Photos app in the United States, with plans to roll out to other countries in the forthcoming months.”
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