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Google quietly paused the rollout of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered photo search tool this week after users complained it was “painfully slow” and made the app worse than before.
The tech giant suspended expansion of “Ask Photos” on June 3, admitting the experimental feature wasn’t ready for prime time. Jamie Aspinall, Google Photos product manager, cited three critical problems: speed, accuracy, and poor user experience.
“Ask Photos isn’t where it needs to be, in terms of latency, quality, and ux,” Aspinall wrote on X in response to user criticism. “Rollout has been paused at very small numbers while we address these issues.”
The feature promised to revolutionize photo searching. Users could ask natural language questions like “Show me the best photo from each national park I’ve visited” or “What themes have we had for birthday parties?” Google’s Gemini AI would then scan photo libraries and provide answers.
Reality fell short of expectations as early users reported that the tool often missed relevant photos entirely. Response times crawled along at frustrating speeds. Some described the AI search as inferior to Google Photos’ traditional keyword search.
The problems became so severe that users complained Ask Photos was making their photo app experience worse overall.
Google first announced the feature at its developer conference in May 2024. The company positioned Ask Photos as a major upgrade that would make finding specific memories easier using Gemini’s multimodal AI capabilities.
Rolling out began in September 2024, but Google kept access limited to small test groups. That cautious approach now appears justified given the performance issues.
Aspinall promised an improved version within two weeks that “brings back the speed and recall of the original search.” The company expects the updated tool to match or exceed the performance of Google Photos’ existing search function.
Users who currently have access can disable Ask Photos in their app settings. Google recommends navigating to Settings, then Preferences, then “Gemini features in Google Photos” to turn off the troubled feature.
The Ask Photos delay reflects growing pains as tech companies rush to integrate AI into everyday products. While the technology shows promise, execution often fails to match marketing hype.
Google hasn’t provided additional details about what specifically went wrong or how engineers plan to fix the issues. The company’s cautious approach suggests it learned from previous AI missteps that went viral on social media.
For now, Google Photos users will have to rely on traditional search methods while the company works to make its AI assistant actually helpful rather than harmful.
