Most of our apps these days continue to receive AI upgrades—whether or not we actually want them. That’s no surprise from a company like Google, who is among those leading the AI charge right now. If you use Chrome, Android, or Google Workspace, you’ve likely dealt with Gemini in some capacity.
The charge, as you might expect, continues to this day. On Tuesday, Google announced a set of new AI-powered features coming to Google Photos, for both iOS and Android users. Google doesn’t yet have a definitive release date for these new features, but it seems they’re rolling out soon. These are largely optional—you can keep using Photos as an image library, and avoid using the AI features if you wish. But if you have an interest, especially in AI image editing, here’s what you can expect to see:
Nano Banana
Nano Banana is Google’s current “big thing” in AI imaging. The model allows you to generate or edit images with greater flexibility than previous models—specifically, you can use it to change a single photo in multiple ways, while keeping the subjects consistent across edits. You can ask Nano Banana to change hairdos, outfits, sceneries, image styles, add or remove elements, stack edits, and even combine different attributes of multiple photos. If you take Google’s word for it, it’s a big deal.
Now, Google is making Nano Banana available in Google Photos’ editor. You’ll find the tool under the new “Help me edit” button when opening a photo in the app. Here, you’ll be able to ask the app to make whatever changes you’d like. Google suggests prompts like turning you into the monarch on a deck of cards; transforming a picture into a tiled mosaic; or adding a winter theme to an image to make your family’s holiday card.
Credit: Google
We will need to investigate whether Google Photos’ Nano Banana editor stack up to the tool you’ve been able to use in Gemini. But the option is now there, should you choose to use it.
Personalized edits
What is a photo? You might think that’s a simple one to answer: You point your camera at some, snap away, and boom: A picture is born. But companies like Google are changing the ways we take and edit photos, to the point where that question isn’t so easy to answer. If you adjust the image itself to such a degree that much of the original data is no longer there, is that really a photo? Did that really capture reality? I’m not so sure.
That’s how I’m feeling about Google’s new “personalized edits” for Google Photos. The company says you can fix “minor flaws,” such as blinks or sad faces, with the new “Help me edit” tool. If your kid had their eyes closed during the picture, for example, you can ask “Help me edit” to open their eyes. Google Photos then pulls data from other photos with your kid to generate a version of the photo with their eyes open. Again, I ask you: What is a photo?
Google has used this tech before: Best Take, for example, can snap a series of photos at once, then use the best version of each subject’s face to composite the “best take.” It’s clever, but it’s also strange, especially when the data is not pulled from a different version of the same scene, but from different images of that person from the past.
What do you think so far?
Google Photos for iPhone catches up to Android
Google is also rolling out new previously Android-only features for iPhone users with the Google Photos app. First, the iOS app now support “ask to edit,” a feature that lets you use text or your voice to request edits from Google’s AI. Now, of course, both apps use Nano Banana, but previously, only Android’s app supported this natural language editing system.
In addition, iPhone users will notice a redesigned photo editor. This is the same one Google announced back in May for Android users. The new editor includes edit suggestions (powered by AI, of course) that apply multiple effects at once to your photos. You can also tap on an area of your photo to receive suggested tools for making edits.
Ask about your photos
I feel like I’m saying “ask” a lot in this article, but that’s the crux of Google’s new features here. To wit, the last new feature Google announced for Photos is simply the ability to ask about the images themselves. You can ask about the content of the picture, request similar images in your library, or, if you want, ask for edits. It seems Nano Banana follows you around in multiple places in this update.
Again, none of these new AI features are mandatory if you want to keep using Google Photos AI-free. You can still edit your images yourself; you’ll just need to avoid the “Help me edit” button. You can look at your photo’s metadata manually, instead of using the Ask button. But it does seem, for the foreseeable future, like Google is all-in on these AI features.
