Google Photos adds new AI features for editing, expands AI-powered search to over 100 countries

Google Photos has rolled out a series of new AI-powered features, including a way to edit objects and people in images, a new Ask button for AI-powered answers about the photo or edit requests, AI templates to create new photos, and the expansion of natural language search.

The company first introduced prompt-based editing for Pixel 10 series phones in August. Now, iOS users in the U.S. can describe their edits using voice or text to modify images, Google announced Tuesday. The company is also bringing its redesigned photo editor with easy editing options to iOS.

The upgrade includes a new personalized edits feature that recognizes people from Google Photos’ face groups. Users can find the “Help me edit” option and type several  instructions applicable to people within the photo. For instance, “Remove Riley’s sunglasses, open my eyes, make Engel smile, and open her eyes” to get edits related to each person, as the image below shows.

The company is adding its popular AI image model, Nano Banana, to Google Photos to let users edit their photos to recreate images in new styles like a Renaissance portrait or cartoon strip.

Google is also adding AI templates to easily let users convert one photo into a specific format. With Nano Banana, formats like turning images into retro portraits or action figures became popular. The company said this feature will roll out next week on Android under the Create tab in the U.S. and India, where Nano Banana is used the most.

Google Photos is also getting a slight design change with a new Ask button that will act as a starting point for different AI requests. Users can ask for information about the photo, discover related moments, and edit it using prompts. The company will also show some suggestion chips to indicate what users can do with this feature, which is rolling out to users in the U.S. on iOS and Android.

Last year, Google introduced an AI-powered search feature for the Photos app with an initial launch in the United States. Today, the company is expanding the search to more than 100 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Africa. It will support more than 17 new languages such as Arabic, Bengali, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portugese, and Spanish.