Google has partially paused the rollout of the “Ask Photos” feature in Google Photos, The Verge reports.

First announced at last year’s I/O event, the Gemini-powered search feature allows users to find photos using more conversational terms, such as “Alice and me laughing” or “Emma painting in the backyard.” Google began rolling out the feature to select Android and iOS users in September but has now paused it for some.

“Ask Photos isn’t where it needs to be, in terms of latency, quality and ux. Rollout has been paused at very small numbers while we address these issues,” wrote Google Photos’ product manager Jamie Aspinall in an X post.

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Aspinall’s comments were in response to two users talking about disabling the feature. One of them wanted to do it since they felt it was “much slower with less obvious benefits than the traditional search.” In about two weeks from now, Google will release an improved version of Ask Photos, and it will “bring back the speed and recall of the original search,” Aspinall added. 

This isn’t the first time Google has paused the rollout of an AI feature. Last year, just weeks after launching AI Overviews, Google had to pause the feature since it was generating inaccurate and absurd responses. Before that, Google was also forced to temporarily block Gemini’s image generation capabilities after the AI model provided inaccurate outputs for historical depictions.

The pause on Ask Photos, meanwhile, coincides with the launch of a separate search-related feature in Google Photos. Users can now use quotation marks to search for specific words within photos, Google announced in a community post on Tuesday. The feature can also be used to find exact text matches in file names, camera models, and captions of photos. 

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About Jibin Joseph

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Jibin is a tech news writer based out of Ahmedabad, India. Previously, he served as the editor of iGeeksBlog and is a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast who loves breaking down complex information for a broader audience.

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