Google has 'paused' the Ask Photos rollout

If you're still waiting on access to Google's AI-driven Ask Photos feature, you'll need to hold tight a little longer. Jamie Aspinall, a product manager for Google Photos, chimed in to a conversation on X to address some complaints about the feature. "Ask Photos isn't where it needs to be, in terms of latency, quality and ux," Aspinall wrote. He said the rollout was being paused "at very small numbers" and that a new version of Ask Photos is slated to ship in about two weeks.

Ask Photos was introduced at last year's I/O conference and began select early access availability in September. The feature uses the Gemini AI chatbot to find images from a photo library based on natural language queries.

As with so many tech giants, Google's implementation of AI-powered features to its services has hit several snags. The AI Overviews feature in search had a notoriously bad introduction to users and its image-generation tool offered some baffling results at launch. Google has also seen critiques from former leaders and current employees about its approach to artificial intelligence.